THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT  OF 

Ada  Nisbet 

ENGLISH  READING  ROOM 


JUL171986 


is/,  s  t<r     \/ 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING 


BY 


EDWARD  BULWER/LYTTON 

(LORD  LYTTON) 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CASSELL  PUBLISHING  CO. 
31  EAST  J;TH  ST.  (UNION  SQUARE) 


THE  MKRSHON  COMPANY  PRESS, 
RAHWAY,  N.  J. 


TO   THE 

RIGHT    HONORABLE    C.    T.    D'EYNCOURT.    M.P 
THIS  WORK, 

IN    PART    COMPOSED    UNDER    HIS   HOSPITABLE    ROOF, 
fS  DEDICA  TED, 

AS  A  SLIGHT  MEMORIAL  OF  AFFECTIONATE  FRIENDSHIP  AND 
SINCERE  ESTEEM. 

KNEBWORTH,  1845. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  EDITION  OF  1845. 


MUCH  has  been  written  by  critics,  especially  by  those  in  Germany  (the 
native  land  of  criticism)  upon  the  important  question,  whether  to  please  or 
to  instruct  should  be  the  end  of  Fiction — whether  a  moral  purpose  is  or  is 
not  in  harmony  with  the  undidactic  spirit  perceptible  in  the  higher  works  of 
the  imagination.  And  the  general  result  of  the  discussion  has  been  in  favor 
of  those  who  have  contended  that  moral  design,  rigidly  so  called,  should  be 
excluded  from  the  aims  of  the  poet  ;  that  his  art  should  regard  01  ly  the 
Beautiful,  and  be  contented  with  the  indirect  moral  tendencies,  which  can 
never  fail  the  creation  of  the  Beautiful.  Certainly,  in  fiction,  to  interest,  to 
please,  and  sportively  to  elevate — to  take  man  from  the  low  passions  an  i  the 
miserable  troubles  of  life,  into  a  higher  region,  to  beguile  weary  and  selfish 
pain,  to  excite  a  generous  sorrow  at  vicissitudes  not  his  own,  to  raise  the 
passions  into  sympathy  with  heroic  struggles — and  to  admit  the  soul  into 
that  serencr  atmosphere  from  which  it  rarely  returns  to  ordinary  existence, 
without  some  memory  or  associ'tion  which  ought  to  enlarge  the  domain  of 
thought  and  exalt  the  motives  of  action; — Such,  without  other  moral  result 
or  object,  may  satisfy  the  Poet,*  and  constitute  the  highest  and  most 
universal  morality  he  can  effect.  But  subordinate  to  this,  which  is  not  the 
duty,  but  the  necessity,  of  all  fiction  that  outlasts  the  hour,  the  writer  of 
imagination  may  well  permit  to  himself  other  purposes  and  objects,  taking 
care  that  they  be  not  too  sharply  defined,  and  too  obviously  meant  to  con- 
tract the  poet  into  the  lecturer — the  fiction  into  the  homily.  The  delight  in 
"  Shylock  "  is  not  less  vivid  for  the  humanity  it  latently  but  profoundly 
inculcates  ;  the  healthful  merriment  of  the  "  Tartu ffe  "  is  not  less  enjoyed 
for  the  exposure  of  the  hypocrisy  it  denounces.  We  need  not  demand  from 
Shakespeare  or  from  Moliere  other  morality  than  that  which  genius  uncon- 
sciously throws  around  it — the  natural  light  which  it  reflects;  but  if  some 
great  principle  which  guides  us  practically  in  the  daily  intercourse  with  men 
becomes  in  the  general  lustre  more  clear  and  more  pronounced — we  gain 
doubly  by  the  general  tendency  and  the  particular  result. 

Long  since,  in  searching  for  new  regions  in  the  art  to  which  I  am  a 
servant,  it  seemed  to  me  that  they  might  be  found  lying  far,  and  rarely 
trodden,  beyond  that  range  of  conventional  morality  in  which  novelist  after 
novelist  has  entrenched  himself — amongst  those  subtle  recesses  in  the  ethics 
of  human  life  in  which  Truth  and  Falsehood  dwell  undisturbed  and  unsepara- 
ted.  The  vast  and  dark  poetry  around  us — the  poetry  of  modern  civilization 
and  daily  existence,  is  shut  out  from  us  in  much,  by  the  shadowy  giants  of 
Prejudice  and  Fear.  He  who  would  arrive  at  the  fairy  land,  must  face  the 
phantoms.  Betimes,  I  set  myself  to  the  ta>k  of  investigating  the  motley 
world  to  which  our  progress  in  humanity  has  attained,  carmg  little  what  mis- 
representation I  incurred,  what  hostility  I  provoked,  in  searching  through 
a  devious  labyrinth  for  the  foot-tracks  of  Truth. 

In  the  pursuit  of  this  object  I  am,  not  vainly,  conscious  that  I  have  had 

*  I  use  the  word  poet  in  its  proper  sense,  as  applicable  to  any  writer,  whether  in  verse 
or  prose,  who  invents  or  creates. 


Vi  PREFACE    TO    THE   EDITION    OF    1845. 

my  influence  on  my  time — that  I  have  contributed,  though  humbly  and  indi- 
rectly, to  the  benefits  which  Public  Opinion  has  extorted  from  Governments 
and  Laws.  While  (to  content  myself  with  a  single  example)  the  ignorant 
or  malicious  were  decrying  the  moral  of  "  Paul  Clifford,"  I  consoled  myselt 
with  perceiving  that  its  truths  had  stricken  deep — that  many,  whom  formal 
essays  might  not  reach,  were  enlisted  by  tlie  picture  and  the  popular  force  of 
fiction  into  the  service  of  that  large  and  catholic  Humanity  which  frankly 
examines  into  the  causes  of  crime,  which  ameliorates  the  ills  of  society  by 
seeking  to  amend  the  circumstances  by  which  they  are  occasioned  ;  and  com- 
mences the  great  work  of  justice  to  mankind,  by  proportioning  the  punish- 
ment to  the  offence.  That  work,  I  know,  had  its  share  in  the  wise  and  great 
relaxation  of  our  Criminal  Code — it  has  had  its  share  in  results  yet  more 
valuable,  because  leading  to  more  comprehensive  reforms — viz.,  in  the 
courageous  facing  of  the  ills  which  the  mock  decorum  of  timidity  would 
shun  to  contemplate,  but  which,  till  fairly  fronted,  in  the  spirit  of  practical 
Christianity, sap  daily,  more  and  more,  the  walls  in  which  blind  Indolence 
would  protect  itself  from  restless  Misery  and  rampant  Hunger.  For  it  is  not 
till  art  has  told  the  unthinking  that  nothing  (rightly  treated)  is  too  low  for 
its  breath  to  vivify,  and  its  wings  to  raise,  that  the  Herd  awaken  from  their 
chronic  lethargy  of  contempt,  and  the  lawgiver  is  compelled  to  redress  what 
the  poet  has  lifted  into  esteem.  In  thus  enlarging  the  boundaries  of  the 
novelist,  from  trite  and  conventional  to  untrodden  ends,  I  have  seen,  not  with 
the  jealousy  of  an  author,  but  with  the  pride  of  an  originator,  that  I  have 
served  as  a  guide  to  later  and  abler  writers,  both  in  England  and  abroad. 
If  at  times,  while  imitating,  they  have  mistaken  me,  I  am  not  answerable  for 
their  errors  ;  or  if,  more  often,  they  have  improved  where  they  borrowed,  I 
am  not  envious  of  their  laurels.  They  owe  me  at  least  this,  that  I  prepared 
the  way  for  their  reception,  and  that  they  would  have  been  less  popular  and 
more  misrepresented,  if  the  outcry  which  bursts  upon  the  first  researches  into 
new  directions,  had  not  exhausted  its  noisy  vehemence  upon  me. 

In  this  novel  of  "  Night  and  Morning"  I  have  had  various  ends  in  view — 
subordinate,  I  grant,  to  the  higher  and  more  durable  morality  which  belongs 
to  the  Ideal,  and  instructs  us  playfully  while  it  interests,  in  the  passions,  and 
through  the  heart.  First — to  deal  fearlessly  with  that  universal  unsoundness 
in  social  justice  which  makes  distinctions  so  marked  and  iniquitous  between 
vice  and  crime — viz.,  between  the  corrupting  habits  and  the  violent  act — 
which  scarce  touches  the  former  with  the  lightest  twig  in  the  fasces — which 
lifts  against  the  latter  the  edge  of  the  Lictor's  axe.  Let  a  child  steal  an 
apple  in  sport,  let  a  starveling  steal  a  roll  in  despair,  and  Law  conducts 
them  to  prison,  for  evil  commune  to  mellow  them  for  the  gibbet.  But  let  a 
man  spend  one  apprenticeship  from  youth  to  old  age  in  vice — let  him  devote 
a  fortune,  perhaps  colossal,  to  the  wholesale  demoralization  of  his  kind — and 
he  may  be  surrounded  with  the  adulation  of  the  so-called  virtuous,  and  be 
served  upon  its  knee,  by  that  lackey — the  Modern  World  !  I  say  not  that 
law  can,  or  that  law  should,  reach  the  vice  as  it  does  the  crime  ;  but  I  say 
that  Opinion  may  be  more  than  the  servile  shadow  of  law.  I  impress  not 
here,  as  in  "Paul  Clifford,1'  a  material  moral  to  work  its  effect  on  the 
journals,  at  the  hustings,  through  constituents,  and  on  legislation  ;  I  direct 
myself  to  a  channel  less  active,  more  tardy,  but  as  sure — to  the  conscience 
that  reigns,  elder  and  superior  to  all  law,  in  men's  hearts  and  souls  ;  I  utter 
boldly  and  loudly  a  truth,  if  not  all  untold,  murmured  feebly  and  falteringly 
before, — sooner  or  later  it  will  find  its  way  into  the  judgment  and  the  con- 
duct, and  shape  out  a  tribunal  which  requires  not  robe  or  ermine. 

Secondly — In  this  work  I  have  sought  to  lift  the  mask  from  the  timid 


PREFACE    TO    THE    EDITION    OF    1845.  VU 

Selfishness  which  too  often  with  us  bears  the  name  of  Respectability,  Pur- 
posely avoiding  all  attraction  that  may  savor  of  extravagance,  patiently 
subduing  every  pain  and  every  hue  to  the  aspect  of  those  whom  we  meet 
daily  in  our  thoroughfares,  I  have  shown  in  Robert  Beaufort  the  man  of 
decorous  phrase  and  bloodless  action — the  systematic  self-server — in  whom 
the  world  forgive  the  lack  of  all  that  is  generous,  warm,  and  noble,  in  order 
to  respect  the  passive  acquiescence  in  methodical  conventions  and  hollow 
forms.  And  how  common  such  men  are  with  us  in  this  century,  and  how 
inviting  and  how  necessary  their  delineation,  may  be  seen  in  this, — that  the 
popular  and  pre-eminent  Observer  of  the  age  in  which  we  live,  has  since 
placed  their  prototype  in  vigorous  colors  upon  imperishable  canvas.  * 

There  is  yet  another  object  with  which  I  have  identified  my  tale.  I  trust  that 
I  am  not  insensible  to  such  advantages  as  arise  from  the  diffusion  of  education 
really  sound  and  knowledge  really  available  ;  for  these,  as  the  right  of  my 
countrymen,  I  have  contended  always.  But  of  lale  years  there  has  been  danger 
that  what  ought  to  be  an  important  truth  may  be  perverted  into  a  pestilent  fal- 
lacy. Whether  for  rich  or  for  poor,  disappointment  must  ever  await  the  en- 
deavor to  give  knowledge  without  labor,  and  experience  without  trial.  Cheap 
literature  and  popular  treatises  do  not  in  themselves  suffice  to  fit  the  nerves 
of  man  for  the  strife  below,  and  lift  his  aspirations  in  healthful  confidence 
above.  He  who  seeks  to  divorce  toil  from  knowledge  deprives  knowledge  of 
its  most  valuable  property, — the  strengthening  of  the  mind  by  exercise.  We 
learn  what  really  braces  and  elevates  us  only  in  proportion  to  the  effort  it 
costs  us.  Nor  is  it  in  books  alone,  nor  in  books  chiefly,  that  we  are  made 
conscious  of  our  strength  as  men  ;  life  is  the  great  school-master,  experience 
the  mighty  volume.  He  who  has  made  one  stern  sacrifice  of  self,  has 
acquired  more  than  he  will  ever  glean  from  the  odds-and-ends  of  popular 
philosophy.  And  the  man,  the  least  scholastic,  may  be  more  robust  in  the 
power  that  is  knowledge,  and  approach  nearer  to  the  Arch-Seraphim,  than 
Bacon  himself,  if  he  cling  fast  to  two  simple  maxims — "  Be  honest  in  tempta- 
tion, and  in  adversity  believe  in  God."  Such  moral,  attempted  before  in 
"  Eugene  Aram,"  I  have  enforced  more  directly  here  ;  and  out  of  such  con- 
victions I  have  created  hero  and  heroine,  placing  them  in  their  primitive  and 
natural  characters,  with  aid  more  from  life  than  books — from  courage  the 
one,  from  affection  the  other — amidst  the  feeble  Hermaphrodites  of  our 
sickly  civilization  ; — examples  of  resolute  manhood  and  tender  womanhood. 

The  opinions  I  have  here  put  forth  are  not  in  fashion  at  this  day.  But  I  have 
never  consulted  the  popular,  any  more  than  the  sectarian,  prejudice.  Alone 
and  unaided,  I  have  hewn  out  my  way,  from  first  to  last,  by  the  force  of  my 
own  convictions.  The  corn  springs  up  in  the  field  centuries  after  the  first 
sower  is  forgotten.  Works  may  perish  with  the  workman  ,  but,  if  truthful, . 
their  results  are  in  the  works  of  others,  imitating,  borrowing,  enlarging,  and 
improving,  in  the  everlasting  cycle  of  industry  and  thought. 

Knebworth,  1845. 

*  Need  I  allude  to  the  "  Pecksniff  "  of  Mr.  Dickens  ? 


NOTE  TO  THE  PRESENT  EDITION,  1851. 


I  HAVE  nothing  to  add  to  the  preceding  pages,  written  six  years  ago,  as  to 
the  objects  and  aims  of  this  work  ;  except  to  say,  and  by  no  means  as  a 
boast,  that  the  work  lays  claim  to  one  kind  of  interest  which  I  certainly  never 
desired  to  effect  for  it— viz.,  in  exemplifying  the  glorious  uncertainty  of  the 
law.  For,  humbly  aware  of  the  blunders  which  novelists  not  belonging  to 
the  legal  profession  are  apt  to  commit,  when  they  summon  to  the  denouement 
of  a  plot  the  aid  of  a  deity  so  mysterious  as  Themis,  I  submitted  to  an  emi- 
nent lawyer  the  whole  case  of  "Beaufort  versus  Beaufort,"  as  it  stands  in  this 
novel.  And  the  pages  which  refer  to  that  suit  were  not  only  written  from 
the  opinion  annexed  to  the  brief  I  sent  in,  but  submitted  to  the  eye  of  my 
counsel,  and  revised  by  his  pen. — N.B.  He  was  feed.  Judge  then  my 
dismay  when  I  heard  long  afterwards  that  the  late  Mr.  O'Connell  disputed  the 
soundness  of  the  law  I  had  thus  bought  and  paid  for  !  "  Who  shall  decide 
when  doctors  disagree  ?  "  All  I  can  say  is,  that  I  took  the  best  opinion  that 
love  or  money  could  get  me  :  and  I  should  add,  that  my  lawyer,  unawed  by 
the  alleged  ipse  dixit  of  the  great  agitator  (to  be  sure,  he  is  dead),  still  stoutly 
maintains  his  own  views  of  the  question.*  Let  me  hope  that  the  right 
heir  will  live  long  enough  to  come  under  the  Statute  of  Limitations.  Posses- 
sion i<  nine  points  of  the  law,  and  may  Time  give  the  tenth. 

Knebworlh. 

*  I  have,  however,  thought  it  prudent  so  far  to  meet  the  objection  suggested  by  Mr. 
O'Connell  as  to  make  a  slight  alteration  in  this  edition,  which  will  probably  prevent  the 
objection,  ;{  correct,  being  of  any  material  practical  effect  on  the  disposition  of  that  vision- 
•uy  El  Dorado— The  Beaufort  Property. 


Tin 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 


BOOK  I. 

INTRODUCTORY  CHAPTER. 

"  Now  rests  our  vicar.     They  who  knew  him  best, 
Proclaim  his  life  to  have  been  entirely  rest; 
Nor  one  so  old  has  left  this  world  of  sin, 
More  like  the  being  that  he  entered  in." — CRABBE. 

IN  one  of  the  Welsh  counties  is  a  small  village  called  A . 

Il  is  somewhat  removed  from  the  high  road,  and  is,  therefore,  but 
little  known  to  those  luxurious  amateurs  of  the  Picturesque,  who 
view  Nature  through  the  windows  of  a  carriage  and  four.  Nor, 
indeed,  is  there  anything,  whether  of  scenery  or  association,  in 
the  place  itself,  sufficient  to  allure  the  more  sturdy  enthusiast  from 
the  beaten  tracks  which  tourists  and  guide-books  prescribe  to 
those  who  search  the  Sublime  and  .Beautiful  amidst  the  mountain 
homes  of  the  ancient  Britons.  Still,  on  the  whole,  the  village  is 
not  without  its  attractions.  It  is  placed  in  a  small  valley,  through 
which  winds  and  leaps,  down  many  a  rocky  fall,  a  clear,  bab- 
bling, noisy  rivulet,  that  affords  excellent  sport  to  the  brethren  of 
the  angle.  Thither,  accordingly,  in  the  summer  season  occa- 
sionally resort  the  Waltons  of  the  neighborhood — young  farmers, 
retired  traders,  with  now  and  then  a  stray  artist,  or  a  roving  stu- 
dent from  one  of  the  universities.  Hence  the  solitary  hostelry  of 

A ,   being    somewhat    more  frequented,  is  also  more  clean 

and  comfortable  than  could  be  reasonably  anticipated  from  the 
insignificance  and  remoteness  of  the  village. 

At  a  time  in  which  my  narrative  opens,  the  village  boasted  a 
sociable,  agreeable,  careless,  half-starved  parson,  who  never  failed 
to  introduce  himself  to  any  of  the  anglers  who,  during  the  sum- 
mer months,  passed  a  day  or  two  in  the  little  valley.  The  Rev. 
Mr.  Caleb  Price  had  been  educated  at  the  University  of  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  had  contrived,  in  three  years,  to  run  through  a 

ii 


12  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

little  fortune  of  ^£3500.  It  is  true,  that  he  acquired  in  return  the 
art  of  making  milk-punch,  the  science  of  pugilism,  and  the  repu- 
tation of  one  of  the  best-natured,  rattling,  open-hearted  compan- 
ions whom  you  could  desire  by  your  side  in  a  tandem  to  New- 
market, or  in  a  row  with  the  bargemen.  By  the  help  of  these 
gifts  and  accomplishments,  he  had  not  failed  to  find  favor,  while 
his  money  lasted,  with  the  young  aristocracy  of  the  "Gentle 
Mother."  And,  though  the  very  reverse  of  an  ambitious  or  cal- 
culating man,  he  had  certainly  nourished  the  belief  that  someone 
of  the  hats  or  tinsel  gowns — /.  <?.,  young  lords  or  fellow-common- 
ers, with  whom  he  was  on  such  excellent  terms,  and  who  supped 
with  him  so  often — would  do  something  for  him  in  the  way  of  a 
living.  But  it  so  happened  that  when  Mr.  Caleb  Price  had,  with 
a  little  difficulty,  scrambled  through  his  degree,  and  found  him- 
self a  Bachelor  of  Arts  and  at  the  end  of  his  finances,  his  grand 
acquaintances  parted  from  him  to  their  various  posts  in  the  State- 
Militant  of  Life.  And,  with  the  exception  of  one,  joyous  and 
reckless  as  himself,  Mr.  Caleb  Price  found  that  when  Money 
makes  itself  wings,  it  flies  away  with  our  friends.  As  poor  Price 
had  earned  no  academical  distinction,  so  he  could  expect  no 
advancement  from  his  college ;  no  fellowship  ;  no  tutorship  lead- 
ing hereafter  to  livings,  stalls,  and  deaneries.  Poverty  began 
already  to  stare  him  in  the  face,  when  the  only  friend  who,  hav- 
ing shared  his  prosperity,  remained  true  to  his  adverse  fate — a 
friend,  fortunately  for  him,  of  high  connections  and  brilliant  pros- 
pects— succeeded  in  obtaining  for  him  the  humble  living  of 
A .  To  this  primitive  spot  the  once  jovial  roister  cheer- 
fully retired — contrived  to  live  contented  upon  an  income  some- 
what less  than  he  had  formerly  given  to  his  groom — preached  very 
short  sermons  to  a  very  scanty  and  ignorant  congregation,  some  of 
whom  only  understood  Welsh — did  good  to  the  poor  and  sick  in 
his  own  careless,  slovenly  way — and,  uncheered  or  unvexed  by 
wife  and  children,  he  rose  in  summer  with  the  lark,  and  in  win- 
ter went  to  bed  at  nine  precisely,  to  save  coals  and  candles.  For 
the  rest,  he  was  the  most  skilful  angler  in  the  whole  county ;  and 
so  willing  to  communicate  the  results  of  his  experience  as  to  the 
most  taking  color  of  the  flies,  and  the  most  favored  haunts  of  the 
trout,  that  he  had  given  special  orders  at  the  inn,  that  whenever 
any  strange  gentleman  came  to  fish,  Mr.  Caleb  Price  should  be 
immediately  sent  for.  In  this,  to  be  sure,  our  worthy  pastor  had 
his  usual  recompense.  First,  if  the  stranger  were  tolerably  lib- 
eral, Mr.  Price  was  asked  to  dinner  at  the  inn  ;  and,  secondly,  if 
this  failed,  from  the  poverty  or  the  churlishness  of  the  obliged 
party,  Mr.  Price  still  had  an  opportunity  to  hear  the  last  news  ;  to 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  13 

talk  about  the  Great  World — in  a  word,  to  exchange  ideas,  and  per- 
haps to  get  an  old  newspaper,  or  an  odd  number  of  a  magazine. 

Now,  it  so  happened  that  one  afternoon  in  October,  when  the  peri- 
odical excursions  of  the  anglers,  becoming  gradually  rarer  and  more 
rare,  had  altogether  ceased,  Mr.  Caleb  Price  was  summoned  from 
his  parlor,  in  which  he  had  been  employed  in  the  fabrication  of  a 
net  for  his  cabbages,  by  a  little  white-headed  boy,  who  came  to 
say  there  was  a  gentleman  at  the  inn  who  wished  immediately  to 
see  him — a  strange  gentleman,  who  had  never  been  there  before. 

Mr.  Price  threw  down  his  net,  seized  his  hat,  and,  in  less  than 
five  minutes,  he  was  in  the  best  room  of  the  little  inn. 

The  person  there  awaiting  him  was  a  man  who,  though  plainly 
clad  in  a  velveteen  shooting-jacket,  had  an  air  and  mien  greatly 

above  those  common  to  the  pedestrian  visitors  of  A .  He 

was  tall,  and  of  one  of  those  athletic  forms  in  which  vigor  in  youth 
is  too  often  followed  by  corpulence  in  age.  At  this  period,  how- 
ever, in  the  full  prime  of  manhood,  the  ample  chest  and  sinewy 
limbs,  seen  to  full  advantage  in  their  simple  and  manly  dress, 
could  not  fail  to  excite  that  popular  admiration  which  is  always 
given  to  strength  in  the  one  sex  as  to  delicacy  in  the  other.  The 
stranger  was  walking  impatiently  to  and  fro  the  small  apartment 
when  Mr.  Price  entered  ;  and  then,  turning  to  the  clergyman  a 
countenance  handsome  and  striking,  but  yet  more  prepossessing 
from  its  expression  of  frankness  than  from  the  regularity  of  its  feat- 
ures, he  stopped  short,  held  out  his  hand,  and  said,  with  a  gay 
laugh,  as  he  glanced  over  the  parson's  threadbare  and  slovenly 
costume,  "My  poor  Caleb! — what  a  metamorphosis  !  I  should 
not  have  known  you  again  !  " 

"What!  you  !  Is  it  possible,  my  dear  fellow?  How  glad  I 
am  to  see  you  !  What  on  earth  can  bring  you  to  such  a  place  ! 
No  !  not  a  soul  would  believe  me  if  I  said  I  had  seen  you  in  this 
miserable  hole." 

"That  is  precisely  the  reason  why  I  am  here.  Sit  down, 
Caleb,  and  we'll  talk  over  matters  as  soon  as  our  landlord  has 
brought  up  the  materials  for — " 

"The  milk-punch,"  interrupted  Mr.  Price,  rubbing  his  hands. 
"Ah,  that  will  bring  us  back  to  old  times  indeed  !  " 

In  a  few  minutes  the  punch  was  prepared,  and  after  two  or  three 
preparatory  glasses,  the  stranger  thus  commenced  : 

"  My  dear  Caleb,  I  am  in  want  of  your  assistance,  and,  above 
all,  of  your  secrecy." 

"  I  promise  you  beforehand.  It  will  make  me  happy  the  rest 
of  my  life  to  think  I  have  served  my  patron — my  benefactor — the 
only  friend  I  possess," 


14  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

"Tush,  man!  don't  talk  of  that:  we  shall  do  better  for  you 
one  of  these  days.  But  now  to  the  point :  I  have  come  here  to  be 
married  ;  married,  old  boy  !  married  !  " 

And  the  stranger  threw  himself  back  in  his  chair,  and  chuckled 
with  the  glee  of  a  schoolboy. 

"  Humph  !  "  said  the  parson  gravely.  "  It  is  a  serious  thing  to 
do,  and  a  very  odd  place  to  come  to." 

"  I  admit  both  propositions  :  this  punch  is  superb.  To  proceed. 
You  know  that  my  uncle's  immense  fortune  is  at  his  own  disposal; 
if  I  disoblige  him,  he  would  be  capable  of  leaving  all  to  my 
brother;  I  should  disoblige  him  irrevocably  if  he  knew  I  had 
married  a  tradesman's  daughter ;  I  am  going  to  marry  a  trades- 
man's daughter — a  girl  in  a  million !  the  ceremony  must  be  as 
secret  as  possible.  And  in  this  church,  with  you  for  the  priest,  I 
do  not  see  a  chance  of  discovery." 

' '  Do  you  marry  by  license  ? ' ' 

"No,  my  intended  is  not  of  age;  and  we  keep  the  secret  even 
from  her  father.  In  this  village  you  will  mumble  over  the  bans 
without  one  of  your  congregation  ever  taking  heed  of  the  name. 
I  shall  stay  here  a  month  for  the  purpose.  She  is  in  London,  on 
a  visit  to  a  relation  in  the  city.  The  bans  on  her  side  will  be 
published  with  equal  privacy  in  a  little  church  near  the  Tower, 
where  my  name  will  be  no  less  unknown  than  here.  Oh,  I've 
contrived  it  famously  !  " 

"  But,  my  dear  fellow,  consider  what  you  risk." 

"I  have  considered  all,  and  I  find  every  chance  in  my  favor. 
The  bride  will  arrive  here  on  the  day  of  our  wedding:  my  ser- 
vant will  be  one  witness  ;  some  stupid  old  Welshman,  as  antedilu- 
vian as  possible — I  leave  it  to  you  to  select  him — shall  be  the  other. 
My  servant  I  shall  dispose  of,  and  the  rest  I  can  depend  on." 

"But—" 

*I  detest  buts;  if  I  had  to  make  a  language,  I  would  not 
admit  such  a  word  in  it.  And  now,  before  I  run  on  about  Cath- 
erine, a  subject  quite  inexhaustible,  tell  me,  my  dear  friend,  some- 
thing about  yourself." 

*  *  *  *  *  *  # 

Somewhat  more  than  a  month  had  elapsed  since  the  arrival  of 
the  stranger  at  the  village  inn.  He  had  changed  his  quarters  for 
the  Parsonage ;  went  out  but  little,  and  then  chiefly  on  foot-ex- 
cursions among  the  sequestered  hills  in  the  neighborhood :  he  was 
therefore  but  partially  known  by  sight,  even  in  the  village ;  and 
the  visit  of  some  old  college  friend  to  the  minister,  though  indeed 
it  had  never  chanced  before,  was  not,  in  itself,  so  remarkable  an 
event  as  to  excite  any  particular  observation.  The  bans  had  been 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  i$ 

duly,  and  half  audibly,  hurried  over,  after  the  service  was  con- 
cluded, and  while  the  scanty  congregation  were  dispersing  down 
the  little  aisle  of  the  church, — when  one  morning  a  chaise  and 
pair  arrived  at  the  Parsonage.  A  servant  out  of  livery  leaped  from 
the  box.  The  stranger  opened  the  door  of  the  chaise,  and,  utter- 
ing a  joyous  exclamation,  gave  his  arm  to  a  lady,  who,  trembling 
and  agitated,  could  scarcely,  even  with  that  stalwart  support,  de- 
scend the  steps.  "Ah!  "  she  said,  in  a  voice  choked  with  tears, 
when  they  found  themselves  alone  in  the  little  parlor, — "ah!  if 
you  knew  how  I  have  suffered  !  " 

How  is  it  that  certain  words,  and  those  the  homeliest,  which 
the  hand  writes  and  the  eye  reads  as  trite  and  commonplace  ex- 
pressions, when  spoken,  convey  so  much,  so  many  meanings  com- 
plicated and  refined  ?  "Ah  !  if  you  knew  how  I  have  suffered  !" 

When  the  lover  heard  these  words,  his  gay  countenance  fell:  he 
drew  back ;  his  conscience  smote  him  :  in  that  complaint  was  the 
whole  history  of  a  clandestine  love,  not  for  both  the  parties,  but  for 
the  woman — the  painful  secrecy,  the  remorseful  deceit,  the  shame, 
the  fear — the  sacrifice.  She  who  uttered  those  words  was  scarcely 
sixteen.  It  is  an  early  age  to  leave  childhood  behind  forever  ! 

"My  own  love !  you  have  suffered,  indeed ;  but  it  is  over  now." 

"  Over  !  And  what  will  they  say  of  me?  What  will  they  think 
of  me  at  home  ?  Over  !  Ah  !  " 

"It  is  but  a  short  time;  in  the  course  of  nature,  my  uncle 
cannot  live  long:  all  then  will  be  explained.  Our  marriage  once 
made  public,  all  connected  with  you  will  be  proud  to  own  you.  You 
will  have  wealth,  station  ;  a  name  among  the  first  in  the  gentry  of 
England.  But  above  all,  you  will  have  the  happiness  to  think 
that  your  forbearance  for  a  time  has  saved  me,  and,  it  may  be,  our 
children,  sweet  one  !  from  poverty  and — " 

"It  is  enough,"  interrupted  the  girl ;  and  the  expression  of  her 
countenance  became  serene  and  elevated.  "It  is  for  you — for 
your  sake.  I  know  what  you  hazard  :  how  much  I  must  owe  you  ! 
Forgive  me,  this  is  the  last  murmur  you  shall  ever  hear  from  these 
lips." 

An  hour  after  these  words  were  spoken  the  marriage  ceremony 
was  concluded. 

"  Caleb,"  said  the  bridegroom,  drawing  the  clergyman  aside  as 
they  were  about  to  re-enter  the  house,  "  you  will  keep  your  prom- 
ise, I  know ;  and  you  think  I  may  depend  implicitly  upon  the 
good  faith  of  the  witness  you  have  selected?  " 

"Upon  his  good  faith?  no,"  said  Caleb,  smiling  ;  "  but  upon 
his  deafness,  his  ignorance,  and  his  age.  My  poor  old  clerk  !  he 
will  have  forgotten  all  about  it  before  this  dav  three  months. 


l6  iSTiGHT   AND   MORNING. 

Now  I  have  seen  your  lady,  I  no  longer  wonder  that  you  incur  so 
great  a  risk.  I  never  beheld  so  lovely  a  countenance.  You  will 
be  happy  !"  And  the  village  priest  sighed,  and  thought  of  the 
corning  winter,  and  his  own  lonely  hearth. 

"  My  dear  friend,  you  have  only  seen  her  beauty;  it  is  her 
least  charm.  Heaven  knows  how  often  I  have  made  love ;  and 
this  is  the  only  woman  I  have  ever  really  loved.  Caleb,  there  is 
an  excellent  living  that  adjoins  my  uncle's  house.  The  rector  is 
old  ;  when  the  house  is  mine,  you  will  not  be  long  without  the 
living.  We  shall  be  neighbors,  Caleb,  and  then  you  shall  try 
and  find  a  bride  for  yourself.  Smith," — and  the  bridegroom 
turned  to  the  servant  who  had  accompanied  his  wife,  and  served 
as  a  second  witness  to  the  marriage, — "tell  the  post-boy  to  put 
to  the  horses  immediately." 

"Yes,  sir.     May  I  speak  a  word  with  you?  " 

"Well,  what?" 

"Your  uncle,  sir,  sent  for  me  to  come  to  him,  the  day  before 
we  left  town." 

"  Aha!  indeed  !  " 

' '  And  I  could  just  pick  up  among  his  servants  that  he  had 
some  suspicion ;  at  least,  that  he  had  been  making  inquiries,  and 
seemed  very  cross,  sir." 

"You  went  to  him  ?  " 

"  No,  sir,  I  was  afraid.  He  has  such  a  way  with  him;  when- 
ever his  eye  is  fixed  on  mine,  I  always  feel  as  if  it  was  impossible 
to  tell  a  lie;  and — and — in  short,  I  thought  it  was  best  not  to  go." 

"  You  did  right.  Confound  this  fellow  !  "  muttered  the  bride- 
groom, turning  away;  "he  is  honest,  and  loves  me:  yet,  if  my 
uncle  sees  him,  he  is  clumsy  enough  to  betray  all.  Well,  I 
always  meant  to  get  him  out  of  the  way ;  the  sooner  the  better. 
Smith  !  " 

"  Yes,  sir  !  " 

"  You  have  often  said  that  you  should  like,  if  you  had  some 
capital,  to  settle  in  Australia :  your  father  is  an  excellent  farmer ; 
you  are  above  the  situation  you  hold  with  me ;  you  are  well  edu- 
cated, and  have  some  knowledge  of  agriculture  ;  you  can  scarcely 
fail  to  make  a  fortune  as  a  settler ;  and  if  you  are  of  the  same 
mind  still,  why  look  you,  I  have  just  £1000  at  my  banker's : 
you  shall  have  half,  if  you  like  to  sail  by  the  first  packet." 

"Oh,  sir,  you  are  too  generous." 

"Nonsense!  no  thanks:  I  am  more  prudent  than  generous ; 
for  I  agree  with  you  that  it  is  all  up  with  me  if  my  uncle  gets 
hold  of  you.  I  dread  my  prying  brother,  too ;  in  fact,  the  obli- 
gation is  on  my  side :  only  stay  abroad  till  I  am  a  rich  man,  and 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  17 

my  marriage  made  public,  and  then  you  may  ask  of  me  what  you 
will.  It's  agreed,  then ;  order  the  horses ;  we'll  go  round  by 
Liverpool,  and  learn  about  the  vessels.  By  the  way,  my  good 
fellow,  I  hope  you  see  nothing  now  of  that  good-for-nothing 
brother  of  yours  ?  ' ' 

"  No,  indeed,  sir.  It's  a  thousand  pities  he  has  turned  out  so 
ill ;  for  he  was  the  cleverest  of  the  family,  and  could  always  twist 
me  round  his  little  finger." 

"  That's  the  very  reason  I  mentioned  him.  If  he  learned  our 
secret,  he  would  take  it  to  an  excellent  market.  Where  is  he?  " 

"  Hiding,  I  suspect,  sir." 

"  Well,  we  shall  put  the  sea  between  you  and  him  !  So  now 
all's  safe." 

Caleb  stood  by  the  porch  of  his  house  as  the  bride  and  bride- 
groom entered  their  humble  vehicle.  Though  then  November, 
the  day  was  exquisitely  mild  and  calm,  the  sky  without  a  cloud, 
and  even  the  leafless  trees  seemed  to  smile  beneath  the  cheerful 
sun.  And  the  young  bride  wept  no  more ;  she  was  with  him  she 
loved ;  she  was  his  forever.  She  forgot  the  rest.  The  hope, 
the  heart  of  sixteen,  spoke  brightly  out  through  the  blushes  that 
mantled  over  her  fair  cheeks.  The  bridegroom's  frank  and 
manly  countenance  was  radiant  with  joy.  As  he  waved  his  hand 
to  Caleb  from  the  window,  the  postboy  cracked  his  whip,  the 
servant  settled  himself  on  the  dickey,  the  horses  started  off  in  a 
brisk  trot, — the  clergyman  was  left  alone  ! 

To  be  married  is  certainly  an  event  in  life ;  to  marry  other 
people  is,  for  a  priest,  a  very  ordinary  occurrence ;  and  yet,  from 
that  day,  a  great  change  began  to  operate  in  the  spirits  and  the 
habits  of  Caleb  Price.  Have  you  ever,  my  gentle  reader,  buried 
yourself  for  some  time  quietly  in  the  lazy  ease  of  a  dull  country 
life?  Have  you  ever  become  gradually  accustomed  to  its  monot- 
ony, and  inured  to  its  solitude ;  and,  just  at  the  time  when  you 
have  half  forgotten  the  great  world — that  mare  magnum  that  frets 
and  roars  in  the  distance — have  you  ever  received  in  your  calm 
retreat  some  visitor,  full  of  the  busy  and  excited  life  which  you 
imagined  yourself  contented  to  relinquish  ?  If  so,  have  you  not 
perceived,  that,  in  proportion  as  his  presence  and  communication 
either  revived  old  memories,  or  brought  before  you  new  pictures 
of  "the  bright  tumult"  of  that  existence  of  which  your  guest 
made  a  part,  you  began  to  compare  him  curiously  with  yourself; 
you  began  to  feel  that  what  before  was  to  rest  is  now  to  rot ;  that 
your  years  are  gliding  from  you  unenjoyed  and  wasted ;  that  the 
contrast  between  the  animal  life  of  passionate  civilization  and  the 
vegetable  torpor  of  motionless  seclusion  is  one  that,  if  you  arc 

2 


1 8  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

still  young,  it  tasks  your  philosophy  to  bear, — feeling  all  the 
while  that  the  torpor  may  be  yours  to  your  grave  ?  And  when 
your  guest  has  left  you,  when  you  are  again  alone,  is  the  solitude 
the  same  as  it  was  before  ? 

Our  poor  Caleb  had  for  years  rooted  his  thoughts  to  his  village. 
His  guest  had  been,  like  the  Bird  in  the  fairy  tale,  settling  upon 
the  quiet  branches,  and  singing  so  loudly  and  so  gladly  of  the 
enchanted  skies  afar,  that,  when  it  flew  away,  the  tree  pined, 
nipped  and  withering  in  the  sober  sun  in  which  before  it  had 
basked  contented.  The  guest  was,  indeed,  one  of  those  men 
whose  animal  spirits  exercise  upon  such  as  come  within  their  circle 
the  influence  and  power  usually  ascribed  only  to  intellectual  quali- 
ties. During  the  month  he  had  sojourned  with  Caleb  he  had 
brought  back  to  the  poor  parson  all  the  gaiety  of  the  brisk  and 
noisy  novitiate  that  preceded  the  solemn  vow  and  the  dull  retreat ; 
the  social  parties,  the  merry  suppers,  the  open-handed,  open- 
hearted  fellowship  of  riotous,  delightful,  extravagant,  thoughtless 
YOUTH.  And  Caleb  was  not  a  bookman — not  a  scholar ;  he  had 
no  resources  in  himself,  no  occupation  but  his  indolent  and  ill- 
paid  duties.  The  emotions,  therefore,  of  the  Active  Man  were 
easily  aroused  within  him.  But  if  this  comparison  between  his 
past  and  present  life  rendered  him  restless  and  disturbed,  how 
much  more  deeply  and  lastingly  was  he  affected  by  a  contrast 
between  his  own  future  and  that  of  his  friend  !  Not  in  those  points 
where  he  could  never  hope  equality — wealth  and  station — the 
conventional  distinctions  to  which,  after  all,  a  man  of  ordinary 
sense  must  sooner  or  later  reconcile  himself;  but  in  that  one 
respect  wherein  all,  high  and  low,  pretend  to  the  same  rights — 
rights  which  a  man  of  moderate  warmth  of  feeling  can  never  will- 
ingly renounce ;  viz.,  a  partner  in  a  lot,  however  obscure;  a  kind 
face  by  a  hearth,  no  matter  how  mean  it  be !  And  his  happier 
friend,  like  all  men  full  of  life,  was  full  of  himself — full  of  his 
love,  of  his  future,  of  the  blessings  of  home,  and  wife,  and  children. 
Then,  too,  the  young  bride  seemed  so  fair,  so  confiding,  and  so 
tender;  so  formed  to  grace  the  noblest,  or  to  cheer  the  humblest 
home !  And  both  were  so  happy,  so  all  in  all  each  to  each  other, 
as  they  left  that  barren  threshold  !  And  the  priest  felt  all  this,  as, 
melancholy  and  envious,  he  turned  from  the  door  in  that  November 
day,  to  find  himself  thoroughly  alone.  He  now  began  seriously  to 
muse  upon  those  fancied  blessings  which  men  wearied  with  celi- 
bacy see  springing,  heavenward,  behind  the  altar.  A  few  weeks 
afterwards  a  notable  change  was  visible  in  the  good  man's  exterior. 
He  became  more  careful  of  his  dress,  he  shaved  every  morning, 
he  purchased  a  crop-eared  Welsh  cob ;  and  it  was  soon  known  in 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  1Q 

the  neighborhood  that  the  only  journey  the  cob  was  ever  con- 
demned to  take  was  to  the  house  of  a  certain  squire,  who,  amidst 
a  family  of  all  ages,  boasted  two  very  pretty  marriageable  daugh- 
ters. That  was  the  second  holyday-time  of  poor  Caleb — the  love- 
romance  of  his  life ;  it  soon  closed.  On  learning  the  amount  of 
the  pastor's  stipend,  the  squire  refused  to  receive  his  addresses ; 
and,  shortly  after,  the  girl  to  whom  he  had  attached  himself  made 
what  the  world  calls  a  happy  match  :  and  perhaps  it  was  one,  for 
I  never  heard  that  she  regretted  the  forsaken  lover.  Probably 
Caleb  was  not  one  of  those  whose  place  in  a  woman's  heart  is 
never  to  be  supplied.  The  lady  married,  the  world  went  round 
as  before,  the  brook  danced  as  merrily  through  the  village,  the 
poor  worked  on  the  week-days,  and  the  urchins  gambolled  round 
the  gravestones  on  the  Sabbath, — and  the  pastor's  heart  was 
broken.  He  languished  gradually  and  silently  away.  The  vil- 
lagers observed  that  he  had  lost  his  old  good-humored  smile  ; 
that  he  did  not  stop  every  Saturday  evening  at  the  carrier's  gate, 
to  ask  if  there  were  any  news  stirring  in  the  town  which  the  car- 
rier weekly  visited ;  that  he  did  not  come  to  .borrow  the  stray 
newspapers  that  now  and  then  found  their  way  into  the  village ; 
that,  as  he  sauntered  along  the  brookside,  his  clothes  hung  loose 
on  his  limbs,  and  that  he  no  longer  "  whistled  as  he  went";  alas, 
he  was  no  longer  "  in  want  of  thought "  !  By  degrees,  the  walks 
themselves  were  suspended  ;  the  parson  was  no  longer  visible ;  a 
stranger  performed  his  duties. 

One  day,  it  might  be  some  three  years  or  more  after  the  fatal 
visit  I  have  commemorated — one  very  wild,  rough  day  in  early 
March,  the  postman,  who  made  the  round  of  the  district,  rung  at 
the  parson's  bell.  The  single  female  servant,  her  red  hair  loose 
on  her  neck,  replied  to  the  call. 

' '  And  how  is  the  master  ?  ' ' 

"Very  bad ;  "  and  the  girl  wiped  her  eyes. 

"He  should  leave  you  something  handsome,"  remarked  the 
postman,  kindly,  as  he  pocketed  the  money  for  the  letter. 

The  pastor  was  in  bed — the  boisterous  wind  rattled  down  the 
chimney  and  shook  the  ill-fitting  casement  in  its  rotting  frame. 
The  clothes  he  had  last  worn  were  thrown  carelessly  about,  un- 
smoothed,  unbrushed ;  the  scanty  articles  of  furniture  were  out 
of  their  proper  places :  slovenly  discomfort  marked  the  death- 
chamber.  And  by  the  bedside  stood  a  neighboring  clergyman, 
a  stout,  rustic,  homely,  thoroughly  Welsh  priest,  who  might  have 
sat  for  the  portrait  of  Parson  Adams. 

"  Here's  a  letter  for  you,"  said  the  visitor. 

"For  me!"  echoed   Caleb,  feebly.     "Ah — well — is   it  not 


20  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

very  dark,  or  are  my  eyes  failing  ?  "  The  clergyman  and  the  ser- 
vant drew  aside  the  curtains,  and  propped  the  sick  man  up :  he 
read  as  follows,  slowly,  and  with  difficulty  : 

"  DEAR  CALEB  :  At  last  I  can  do  something  for  you.  A  friend 
of  mine  has  a  living  in  his  gift  just  vacant,  worth,  I  understand, 
from  three  to  four  hundred  a  year :  pleasant  neighborhood ; 
small  parish.  And  my  friend  keeps  the  hounds  !  just  the  thing 
for  you.  He  is,  however,  a  very  particular  sort  of  person  ;  wants 
a  companion,  and  has  a  horror  of  anything  evangelical ;  wishes, 
therefore,  to  see  you  before  he  decides.  If  you  can  meet  me  in 
London,  some  day  next  month,  I'll  present  you  to  him,  and  I 
have  no  doubt  it  will  be  settled.  You  must  think  it  strange  I 
never  wrote  to  you  since  we  parted,  but  you  know  I  never  was  a 
very  good  correspondent ;  and  as  I  had  nothing  to  communicate 
advantageous  to  you,  I  thought  it  a  sort  of  insult  to  enlarge  on 
my  own  happiness,  and  so  forth.  All  I  shall  say  on  that 
score  is,  that  I've  sown  my  wild  oats ;  and  that  you  may  take  my 
word  for  it,  there's  nothing  that  can  make  a  man  know  how  large 
the  heart  is,  and  how  little  the  world,  till  he  comes  home  (per- 
haps after  a  hard  day's  hunting)  and  sees  his  own  fireside,  and 
hears  one  dear  welcome;  and — oh,  by  the  way,  Caleb,  if  you 
could  but  see  my  boy,  the  sturdiest  little  rogue  !  But  enough  of 
this.  All  that  vexes  me  is,  that  I've  never  yet  been  able  to  declare 
my  marriage:  my  uncle,  however,  suspects  nothing:  my  wife 
bears  up  against  all,  like  an  angel  as  she  is ;  still,  in  case  of  any 
accident,  it  occurs  to  me,  now  I'm  writing  to  you,  especially  if 
you  leave  the  place,  that  it  may  be  as  well  to  send  me  an  examined 
copy  of  the  register.  In  those  remote  places  registers  are  often 
lost  or  mislaid  ;  and  it  may  be  useful  hereafter,  when  I  proclaim 
the  marriage,  to  clear  up  all  doubt  as  to  the  fact. 
"  Good-by,  old  fellow, 

"  Yours  most  truly, 

''Etc.  etc." 

"It  comes  too  late,"  sighed  Caleb,  heavily;  and  the  letter 
fell  from  his  hands.  There  was  a  long  pause.  ' '  Close  the  shut- 
ters," said  the  sick  man,  at  last;  "  I  think  I  could  sleep;  and 
— and — pick  up  that  letter." 

With  a  trembling,  but  eager  grip,  he  seized  the  paper,  as  a 
miser  would  seize  the  deeds  of  an  estate  on  which  he  has  a  mort- 
gage. He  smoothed  the  folds,  looked  complacently  at  the  well- 
known  hand,  smiled — a  ghastly  smile  !  and  then  placed  the  letter 
under  his  pillow,  and  sank  down  :  they  left  him  alone.  He  did 
not  wake  for  some  hours,  and  that  good  clergyman,  poor  as  him- 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  21 

Self,  was  again  at  his  post.  The  only  friendships  that  are  really 
with  us  in  the  hour  of  need,  are  those  which  are  cemented  by 
equality  of  circumstance.  In  the  depth  of  home,  in  the  hour  of 
tribulation,  by  the  bed  of  death,  the  rich  and  the  poor  are  seldom 
found  side  by  side.  Caleb  was  evidently  much  feebler ;  but  his 
sense  seemed  clearer  than  it  had  been,  and  the  instincts  of  his 
native  kindness  were  the  last  that  left  him.  "  There  is  something 
he  wants  me  to  do  for  him,"  he  muttered.  "  Ah  !  I  remember  : 
Jones,  will  you  send  for  the  parish  register  ?  It  is  somewhere  in 
the  vestry-room,  I  think  :  but  nothing's  kept  properly.  Better  go 
yourself;  'tis  important." 

Mr.  Jones  nodded,  and  sallied  forth.  The  register  was  not  in 
the  vestry ;  the  churchwardens  knew  nothing  about  it ;  the  clerk 
— a  new  clerk,  who  was  also  the  sexton,  and  rather  a  wild  fellow 
— had  gone  ten  miles  off  to  a  wedding  :  every  place  was  searched ; 
till,  at  last,  the  book  was  found,  amidst  a  heap  of  old  magazines 
and  dusty  papers,  in  the  parlor  of  Caleb  himself.  By  the  time  it 
was  brought  to  him,  the  sufferer  was  fast  declining ;  with  some 
difficulty  his  dim  eye  discovered  the  place  where,  amidst  the 
clumsy  pot-hooks  of  the  parishioners,  the  large,  clear  hand  of  his 
old  friend,  and  the  trembling  characters  of  the  bride,  looked  forth, 
distinguished. 

"  Extract  this  for  me,  will  you,"  said  Caleb. 

Mr.  Jones  obeyed. 

"  Now,  just  write  above  the  extract : 

"SiR, — By  Mr.  Price's  desire  I  send  you  the  enclosed.  He  is 
too  ill  to  write  himself.  But  he  bids  me  say  that  he  has  never 
been  quite  the  same  man  since  you  left  him,  and  that,  if  he  should 
not  get  well  again,  still  your  kind  letter  has  made  him  easier  in 
his  mind." 

Caleb  stopped. 

"Goon." 

"That  is  all  I  have  to  say:  sign  your  name,  and  put  the 
address  :  here  it  is.  Ah,  the  letter  (he  muttered)  must  not  lie 
about !  If  anything  happen  to  me,  it  may  get  him  into  trouble." 

And  as  Mr.  Jones  sealed  his  communication,  Caleb  feebly 
stretched  his  wan  hand,  and  held  the  letter  which  had  "come 
too  late"  over  the  flame  of  the  candle.  As  the  blazing  paper 
dropped  on  the  carpetless  floor,  Mr.  Jones  prudently  set  thereon 
the  broad  sole  of  his  top-boot,  and  the  maid-servant  brushed  the 
tinder  into  the  grate. 

"  Ah,  trample  it  out ;  hurry  it  amongst  the  ashes.  The  last  as 
the  rest,"  said  Caleb  hoarsely.  "Friendship,  fortune,  love,  life 
— a  little  flame,  and  then — and  then — " 


22  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"Don't  be  uneasy  :   it's  quite  out !  "  said  Mr.  Jones. 

Caleb  turned  his  face  to  the  wall.  He  lingered  till  the  next 
day,  when  he  passed  insensibly  from  sleep  to  death.  As  soon  as 
the  breath  was  out  of  his  body,  Mr.  Jones  felt  that  his  duty  was 
discharged,  that  other  duties  called  him  home.  He  promised  to 
return  to  read  the  burial-service  over  the  deceased,  gave  some 
hasty  orders  about  the  plain  funeral,  and  was  turning  from  the 
room,  when  he  saw  the  letter  he  had  written  by  Caleb's  wish, 
still  on  the  table.  "  I  pass  the  post-office;  I'll  put  it  in,"  said  he 
to  the  weeping  servant ;  ' '  and  just  give  me  that  scrap  of  paper. ' ' 
So  he  wrote  on  the  scrap,  "P.  S.  He  died  this  morning  at  half- 
past  twelve,  without  pain.  M.  J.  ;  "  and,  not  taking  the  trouble 
to  break  the  seal,  thrust  the  final  bulletin  into  the  folds  of  the  let- 
ter, which  he  then  carefully  placed  in  his  vest  pocket,  and  safely 
transferred  to  the  post.  And  that  was  all  that  the  jovial  and 
happy  man,  to  whom  the  letter  was  addressed,  ever  heard  of  the 
last  days  of  his  college  friend. 

The  living,  vacant  by  the  death  of  Caleb  Price,  was  not  so 
valuable  as  to  plague  the  patron  with  many  applications.  It  con- 
tinued vacant  nearly  the  whole  of  the  six  months  prescribed  by 
law.  And  the  desolate  parsonage  was  committed  to  the  charge 
of  one  of  the  villagers,  who  had  occasionally  assisted  Caleb  in  the 
care  of  his  little  garden.  The  villager,  his  wife,  and  half-a-dozen 
noisy,  ragged  children,  took  possession  of  the  quiet  bachelor's 
abode.  The  furniture  had  been  sold  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the 
funeral,  and  a  few  trifling  bills ;  and,  save  the  kitchen  and  the 
two  attics,  the  empty  house,  uninhabited,  was  surrendered  to  the 
sportive  mischief  of  the  idle  urchins,  who  prowled  about  the  silent 
chambers  in  fear  of  the  silence,  and  in  ecstasy  at  the  space.  The 
bedroom  in  which  Caleb  had  died  was,  indeed,  long  held  sacred 
by  infantine  superstition.  But  one  day  the  eldest  boy  having 
ventured  across  the  threshold,  two  cupboards,  the  doors  standing 
ajar,  attracted  the  child's  curiosity.  He  opened  one,  and  his 
exclamation  soon  brought  the  rest  of  the  children  round  him. 
Have  you  ever,  reader,  when  a  boy,  suddenly  stumbled  on  that 
El  Dorado,  called  by  grown-up  folks  a  lumber-room  ?  Lumber, 
indeed  !  What  Virtu  double-locks  in  cabinets  is  the  real  lumber  to 
the  boy !  Lumber,  reader  !  To  thee  it  was  a  treasury  !  Now  this 
cupboard  had  been  the  lumber-room  in  Caleb's  household.  In 
an  instant  the  whole  troop  had  thrown  themselves  on  the  motley 
contents.  Stray  joints  of  clumsy  fishing-rods  ;  artificial  baits ;  a 
pair  of  worn-out  top-boots,  in  which  one  of  the  urchins,  whooping 
and  shouting,  buried  himself  up  to  the  middle ;  moth-eaten, 
stained,  and  ragged,  the  collegian's  gown — relic  of  the  dead 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  23 

Itian's  palmy  time ;  a  bag  of  carpenter's  tools,  chiefly  broken ;  a 
cricket-bat ;  an  odd  boxing-glove ;  a  fencing-foil,  snapped  in  the 
middle  ;  and,  more  than  all,  some  half-finished  attempts  at  rude 
toys:  a  boat,  a  cart,  a  doll's  house,  in  which  the  good-natured 
Caleb  had  busied  himself  for  the  younger  ones  of  that  family  in 
which  he  had  found  the  fatal  ideal  of  his  trite  life.  One  by  one 
were  these  lugged  forth  from  their  dusty  slumber ;  profane  hands 
struggling  for  the  first  right  of  appropriation.  And  now,  revealed 
against  the  wall,  glared  upon  the  startled  violators  of  the  sanctu- 
ary, with  glassy  eyes  and  horrent  visage,  a  grim  monster.  They 
huddled  back  one  upon  the  other,  pale  and  breathless,  till  the 
eldest,  seeing  that  the  creature  moved  not,  took  heart,  approached 
on  tip-toe ;  twice  receded,  and  twice  again  advanced,  and  finally 
drew  out,  daubed,  painted,  and  tricked  forth  in  the  semblance  of 
a  griffin,  a  gigantic  Kite  ! 

The  children,  alas  !  were  not  old  and  wise  enough  to  know  all 
the  dormant  value  of  that  imprisoned  aeronaut,  which  had  cost 
Caleb  many  a  dull  evening's  labor — the  intended  gift  to  the  false 
one's  favorite  brother.  But  they  guessed  that  it  was  a  thing  or 
spirit  appertaining  of  right  to  them ;  and  they  resolved,  after 
mature  consultation,  to  impart  the  secret  of  their  discovery  to  an 
old  wooden-legged  villager,  who  had  served  in  the  army,  who  was 
the  idol  of  all  the  children  of  the  place,  and  who,  they  firmly 
believed,  knew  everything  under  the  sun,  except  the  mystical  arts 
of  reading  and  writing.  Accordingly,  having  seen  that  the  coast 
was  clear — for  they  considered  their  parents  (as  the  children  of  the 
hard-working  often  do)  the  natural  foes  to  amusement — they  car- 
ried the  monster  into  an  old  out-house,  and  ran  to  the  veteran  to 
beg  him  to  come  up  slily  and  inspect  its  properties. 

Three  months  after  this  memorable  event,  arrived  the  new  pas- 
tor— a  slim,  prim,  orderly,  and  starch  young  man,  framed  by 
nature  and  trained  by  practice  to  bear  a  great  deal  of  solitude  and 
starving.  Two  loving  couples  had  waited  to  be  married  till  his 
Reverence  should  arrive.  The  ceremony  performed,  where  was 
the  registry-book  ?  The  vestry  was  searched  ;  the  churchwardens 
interrogated ;  the  gay  clerk  who,  on  the  demise  of  his  deaf  prede- 
cessor, had  come  into  office  a  little  before  Caleb's  last  illness,  had 
a  dim  recollection  of  having  taken  the  registry  up  to  Mr.  Price  at 
the  time  the  vestry-room  was  whitewashed.  The  house  was 
searched— -the  cupboard,  the  mysterious  cupboard,  was  explored. 
"Here  it  is,  sir  !  "  cried  the  clerk  ;  and  he  pounced  upon  a  pale 
parchment  volume.  The  thin  clergyman  opened  it,  and  recoiled 
in  dismay — more  than  three-fourths  of  the  leaves  had  been  torn 
out. 


«4  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"It  is  the  moths,  sir,"  said  the  gardener's  wife,  who  had  not 
yet  removed  from  the  house. 

The  clergyman  looked  round  ;  one  of  the  children  was  tremb- 
ling. "  What  have  you  done  to  this  book,  little  one  ?  " 

«  That  book?— the— hi !— hi !— " 

'  Speak  the  truth,  and  you  shan't  be  punished." 

'  I  did  not  know  it  was  any  harm — hi ! — hi ! — " 

'Well,  and— " 

'  And  old  Ben  helped  us." 

'Well?" 

'  And— and — and — hi ! — hi !— The  tail  of  the  kite,  sir !  — " 

'  Where  is  the  kite  ?  ' ' 

Alas  !  the  kite  and  its  tail  were  long  ago  gone  to  that  undis- 
covered limbo,  where  all  things  lost,  broken,  vanished,  and 
destroyed  ;  things  that  lose  themselves,  for  servants  are  too  hon- 
est to  steal ;  things  that  break  themselves,  for  servants  are  too 
careful  to  break ;  find  an  everlasting  and  impenetrable  refuge. 

"  It  does  not  signify  a  pin's  head,"  said  the  clerk  ;  "  the  par- 
ish must  find  a  new  'un  !  " 

"It  is  no  fault  of  mine,"  said  the  Pastor.  "  Are  my  chops 
ready  ? ' ' 

CHAPTER  II. 

"And  soothed  with  idle  dreams  the  frowning  fate." — CRABBE. 

"  WHY  does  not  my  father  come  back  ?  What  a  time  he  has 
been  away  !  " 

"  My  dear  Philip,  business  detains  him ;  but  he  will  be  here  in 
a  few  days  ;  perhaps,  to-day  !  ' ' 

"  I  should  like  him  to  see  how  much  I  am  improved." 

"  Improved  in  what,  Philip?  "  said  the  mother,  with  a  smile. 

"  Not  Latin,  I  am  sure ;  for  I  have  not  seen  you  open  a  book 
since  you  insisted  on  poor  Todd's  dismissal." 

"  Todd  !  Oh,  he  was  such  a  scrub,  and  spoke  through  his  nose : 
what  could  he  know  of  Latin  ?  " 

"More  than  you  ever  will,  I  fear,  unless — "  and  here  there 
was  a  certain  hesitation  in  the  mother's  voice,  "unless  your 
father  consents  to  your  going  to  school." 

"  Well,  I  should  like  to  go  to  Eton  !  That's  the  only  school 
for  a  gentleman.  I've  heard  my  father  say  so." 

"  Philip,  you  are  too  proud." 

"Proud!  you  often  call  me  proud;  but,  then,  you  kiss  me 
when  you  do  so.  Kiss  me  now,  mother," 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  25 

The  lady  drew  her  son  to  her  breast,  put  aside  the  clustering 
hair  from  his  forehead,  and  kissed  him  ;  but  the  kiss  was  sad,  and 
a  moment  after  she  pushed  him  away  gently,  and  muttered,  uncon- 
scious that  she  was  overheard  : 

"  If,  after  all,  my  devotion  to  the  father  should  wrong  the  chil- 
chen  !  " 

The  boy  started,  and  a  cloud  passed  over  his  brow ;  but  he 
said  nothing.  A  light  step  entered  the  room  through  the  French 
casements  that  opened  on  the  lawn,  and  the  mother  turned  to  her 
youngest-born,  and  her  eye  brightened. 

"Mamma!  mamma!  here  is  a  letter  for  you.  I  snatched  it 
from  John  :  it  is  papa's  handwriting." 

The  lady  uttered  a  joyous  exclamation,  and  seized  the  letter. 
The  younger  child  nestled  himself  on  a  stool  at  her  feet,  looking  up 
while  she  read  it ;  the  elder  stood  apart,  leaning  on  his  gun,  and 
with  something  of  thought,  even  of  gloom,  upon  his  countenance. 

There  was  a  strong  contrast  in  the  two  boys.  The  elder,  who 
was  about  fifteen,  seemed  older  than  he  was,  not  only  from  his 
height,  but  from  the  darkness  of  his  complexion,  and  a  certain 
proud,  nay  imperious,  expression  upon  features  that,  without  hav- 
ing the  soft  and  fluent  graces  of  childhood,  were  yet  regular  and 
striking.  His  dark-green  shooting-dress,  with  the  belt  and  pouch, 
the  cap,  with  its  gold  tassel  set  upon  his  luxuriant  curls,  which 
had  the  purple  gloss  of  the  raven's  plume,  blended  perhaps  some- 
thing prematurely  manly  in  his  own  tastes,  with  the  love  of  the 
fantastic  and  the  picturesque  which  bespeaks  the  presiding  genius 
of  the  proud  mother.  The  younger  son  had  scarcely  told  his 
ninth  year ;  and  the  soft,  auburn  ringlets,  descending  half-way 
down  the  shoulders  ;  the  rich  and  delicate  bloom  that  exhibits  at 
once  the  hardy  health  and  the  gentle  fostering ;  the  large,  deep- 
blue  eyes  ;  the  flexile  and  almost  effeminate  contour  of  the  har- 
monious features,  altogether  made  such  an  ideal  of  childlike  beauty 
as  Lawrence  had  loved  to  paint  or  Chantrey  model.  And  the 
daintiest  cares  of  a  mother,  who,  as  yet,  has  her  darling  all  to  her- 
self, her  toy,  her  plaything,  were  visible  in  the  large  falling  collar 
of  finest  cambric,  and  the  blue  velvet  dress  with  its  filigree  buttons 
and  embroidered  sash. 

Both  the  boys  had  about  them  the  air  of  those  whom  Fate  ush- 
ers blandly  into  life — the  air  of  wealth,  and  birth,  and  luxury, 
spoiled  and  pampered  as  if  earth  had  no  thorn  for  their  feet,  and 
heaven  not  a  wind  to  visit  their  young  cheeks  too  roughly.  The 
mother  had  been  extremely  handsome ;  and  though  the  first  bloom 
of  youth  was  now  gone,  she  had  still  the  beauty  that  might  cap- 
tivate new  love — an  easier  task  than  to  retain  the  old.  B'Hh  her 


26  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

sons,  though  differing  from  each  other,  resembled  her  :  she  had 
the  feature s  of  the  younger;  and  probably  any  one  who  had  seen  her 
in  her  own  earlier  youth,  would  have  recognized  in  that  child's  gay 
yet  gentle  countenance  the  mirror  of  the  mother  when  a  girl. 
Now,  however,  especially  when  silent  or  thoughtful,  the  expres- 
sion of  her  face  was  rather  that  of  the  elder  boy ;  the  cheek, 
once  so  rosy,  was  now  pale, though  clear,  with  something  which 
time  had  given,  of  pride  and  thought,  in  the  curved  lip  and  the 
high  forehead.  One  who  could  have  looked  on  her  in  her  more  lone- 
ly hours  might  have  seen  that  the  pride  had  known  shame,  and  the 
thought  was  the  shadow  of  the  passions  of  fear  and  sorrow. 

But  now  as  she  read  those  hasty,  brief,  but  well-remembered 
characters — read  as  one  whose  heart  was  in  her  eyes — joy  and  tri- 
umph alone  were  visible  in  that  eloquent  countenance.  Her  eyes 
flashed,  her  breast  heaved  ;  and  at  length,  clasping  the  letter  to  her 
lips,  she  kissed  it  again  and  again  with  passionate  transport.  Then, 
as  her  eyes  met  the  dark,  enquiring,  earnest  gaze  of  her  eldest- 
born,  she  flung  her  arms  round  him,  and  wept  vehemently. 

"  What  is  the  matter,  mamma,  dear  mamma?  "  said  the  young- 
est, pushing  himself  between  Philip  and  his  mother. 

"  Your  father  is  coming  back,  this  day — this  very  hour  ; — and 
you — you — child — you,  Philip — "  Here  sobs  broke  in  upon  her 
words,  and  left  her  speechless. 

The  letter  that  had  produced  this  effect  ran  as  follows : 

"To  MRS.  MORTON,  Fernside  Cottage. 

' '  DEAREST  KATE, — My  last  letter  prepared  you  for  the  news  I 
have  now  to  relate — my  poor  uncle  is  no  more.  Though  I  had 
seen  so  little  of  him,  especially  of  late  years,  his  death  sensibly 
affected  me ;  but  I  have  at  least  the  consolation  of  thinking,  that 
there  is  nothing  now  to  prevent  my  doing  justice  to  you.  I  am 
the  sole  heir  to  his  fortune;  I  have  it  in  my  power,  dearest  Kate, 
to  offer  you  a  tardy  recompense  for  all  you  have  put  up  with  for 
•wy  sake ;  a  sacred  testimony  to  your  long  forbearance,  your  unre- 
proachful  love,  your  wrongs,  and  your  devotion.  Our  children, 
too — my  noble  Philip !  Kiss  them,  Kate ;  kiss  them  for  me  a  thous- 
and times. 

"  I  write  in  great  haste— the  burial  is  just  over,  and  my  letter 
will  only  serve  to  announce  my  return.  My  darling  Catherine,  I 

shall  be  with  you  almost  as  soon  as  these  lines  meet  your  eyes 

those  dear  eyes,  that,  for  all  the  tears  they  have  shed  for  my  faults 
and  follies,  have  never  looked  the  less  kind. 

' '  Yours,  ever  as  ever, 

"PHILIP  BEAUFORT." 


NTGHT   AND    MORNING.  2^ 

This  letter  has  told  its  tale,  and  little  remains  to  explain. 
Philip  Beaufort  was  one  of  those  men  of  whom  there  are  many  in 
his  peculiar  class  of  society — easy,  thoughtless,  good-humored, 
generous,  with  feelings  infinitely  better  than  his  principles. 

Inheriting  himself  but  a  moderate  fortune,  which  was  three 
parts  in  the  hands  of  the  Jews  before  he  was  twenty-five,  he  had 
the  most  brilliant  expectations  from  his  uncle ;  an  old  bachelor, 
who,  from  a  courtier,  had  turned  a  misanthrope — cold,  ,shrewd, 
penetrating,  worldly,  sarcastic,  and  imperious ;  and  from  this  rela- 
tion he  received,  meanwhile,  a  handsome  and,  indeed,  munificent 
allowance.  About  sixteen  years  before  the  date  at  which  this  nar- 
rative opens,  Philip  Beaufort  had  "run  off,"  as  the  saying  is,  with 
Catherine  Morton,  then  little  more  than  a  child — a  motherless 
child — educated  at  a  boarding-school,  to  notions  and  desires  far 
beyond  her  station ;  for  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  provincial 
tradesman.  And  Philip  Beaufort,  in  the  prime  of  life,  was  pos- 
sessed of  most  of  the  qualities  that  dazzle  the  eyes,  and  many  of 
the  arts  that  betray  the  affections.  It  was  suspected  by  some  that 
they  were  privately  married  :  if  so,  the  secret  had  been  closely 
kept,  and  baffled  all  the  enquiries  of  the  stern  old  uncle.  Still 
there  was  much,  not  only  in  the  manner,  at  once  modest  and  dig- 
nified, but  in  the  character  of  Catherine,  which  was  proud  and 
high-spirited,  to  give  color  to  the  suspicion.  Beaufort,  a  man 
naturally  careless  of  forms,  paid  her  a  marked  and  punctilious  re- 
spect ;  and  his  attachment  was  evidently  one,  not  only  of  passion, 
but  of  confidence  and  esteem.  Time  developed  in  her  mental 
qualities  far  superior  to  those  of  Beaufort,  and  for  these  she  had 
ample  leisure  of  cultivation.  To  the  influence  derived  from  her 
mind  and  person  she  added  that  of  a  frank,  affectionate,  and  win- 
ning disposition  ;  their  children  cemented  the  bond  between  them. 
Mr.  Beaufort  was  passionately  attached  to  field-sports.  He  lived 
the  greater  part  of  the  year  with  Catherine,  at  the  beautiful  cot- 
tage to  which  he  had  built  hunting  stables  that  were  the  admira- 
tion of  the  county;  and  though  the  cottage  was  near  London,  the 
pleasures  of  the  metropolis  seldom  allured  him  for  more  than  a 
few  days,  generally  but  a  few  hours,  at  a  time  ;  and  he  always 
hurried  back  with  renewed  relish  to  what  he  considered  his  home. 

Whatever  the  connection  between  Catherine  and  himself  (and 
of  the  true  nature  of  that  connection,  the  Introductory  Chapter 
has  made  the  reader  more  enlightened  than  the  world),  her  influ- 
ence had,  at  least,  weaned  from  all  excesses,  and  many  follies,  a 
man  who,  before  he  knew  her,  had  seemed  likely,  from  the  ex- 
treme joviality  aud  carelessness  of  his  nature,  and  a  very  imper- 
fect education,  to  contract  whatever  vices  were  most  in  fashion  as 


28  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

preservatives  against  ennui.  And  if  their  union  had  been  openly 
hallowed  by  the  church,  Philip  Beaufort  had  been  universally  es- 
teemed the  model  of  a  tender  husband  and  a  fond  father.  Ever, 
as  he  became  more  and  more  acquainted  with  Catherine's  natural 
good  qualities,  and  more  and  more  attached  to  his  home,  had 
Mr.  Beaufort,  with  the  generosity  of  true  affection,  desired  to  re- 
move from  her  the  pain  of  an  equivocal  condition  by  a  public 
marriage.  But,  Mr.  Beaufort,  though  generous,  was  not  free  from 
the  worldliness  which  had  met  him  every  where,  amidst  the  soci- 
ety in  which  his  youth  had  been  spent.  His  uncle,  the  head  of 
one  of  these  families  which  yearly  vanish  from  the  commonalty 
into  the  peerage,  but  which  once  formed  a  distinguished  peculiar- 
ity in  the  aristocracy  of  England — families  of  ancient  birth,  im- 
mense possessions,  at  once  noble  and  untitled — held  his  estates  by 
no  other  tenure  than  his  own  caprice.  Though  he  professed  to 
like  Philip,  yet  he  saw  but  little  of  him.  When  the  news  of  the 
illicit  connection  his  nephew  was  reported  to  have  formed  reached 
him  he  at  first  resolved  to  break  it  off ;  but  observing  that  Philip 
no  longer  gambled,  nor  run  in  debt,  and  had  retired  from  the 
turf  to  the  safer  and  more  economical  pastimes  of  the  field,  he 
contented  himself  with  enquiries  which  satisfied  him  that  Philip 
was  not  married ;  and  perhaps  he  thought  it,  on  the  whole,  more 
prudent  to  wink  at  an  error  that  was  not  attended  by  the  bills 
which  had  heretofore  characterized  the  human  infirmities  of  his 
reckless  nephew.  He  took  care,  however,  incidentally,  and  in 
reference  to  some  scandal  of  the  day,  to  pronounce  his  opinion, 
not  upon  the  fault,  but  upon  the  only  mode  of  repairing  it. 

"If  ever,"  said  he,  and  he  looked  grimly  at  Philip  while  he 
spoke,  "a.  gentleman  were  to  disgrace  his  ancestry  by  introduc- 
ing into  his  family  one  whom  his  own  sister  could  not  receive  at 
her  house,  why,  he  ought  to  sink  to  her  level,  and  wealth  would 
but  make  his  disgrace  the  more  notorious.  If  I  had  an  only  son, 
and  that  son  were  booby  enough  to  do  anything  so  discreditable 
as  to  marry  beneath  him,  I  would  rather  have  my  footman  for 
my  successor.  You  understand,  Phil?" 

Philip  did  understand,  and  looked  round  at  the  noble  house 
and  the  stately  park,  and  his  generosity  was  not  equal  to  the  trial. 
Catherine — so  great  was  her  power  over  him — might,  perhaps, 
have  easily  triumphed  over  his  more  selfish  calculations  ;  but  her 
love  was  too  delicate  ever  to  breathe,  of  itself,  the  hope  that  lay 
deepest  at  her  heart.  And  her  children  !  ah  !  for  them  she  pined, 
but  for  them  she  also  hoped.  Before  them  was  a  long  future,  and 
she  had  all  confidence  in  Philip.  Of  late,  there  had  been  con- 
siderable doubts  how  far  the  elder  Beaufort  would  realize  the 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  29 

expectations  in  which  his  nephew  had  been  reared.  Philip's 
younger  brother  had  been  much  with  the  old  gentleman,  and 
appeared  to  be  in  high  favor  :  this  brother  was  a  man  in  every 
respect  the  opposite  to  Philip — sober,  supple,  decorous,  ambitious, 
with  a  face  of  smiles  and  a  heart  of  ice. 

But  the  old  gentleman  was  taken  dangerously  ill,  and  Philip 
was  summoned  to  his  bed  of  death.  Robert  the  younger  brother, 
was  there  also,  with  his  wife  (for  he  had  married  prudently)  and 
his  children  (he  had  two,  a  son  and  a  daughter).  Not  a  word 
did  the  uncle  say  as  to  the  disposition  of  his  property  till  an  hour 
before  he  died.  And  then,  turning  in  his  bed,  he  looked  first  at 
one  nephew,  then  at  the  other,  and  faltered  out, — 

"  Philip,  you  are  a  scapegrace,  but  a  gentleman  !  Robert,  you 
are  a  careful,  sober,  plausible  man  ;  and  it  is  a  great  pity  you 
were  not  in  business;  you  would  have  made  a  fortune  !  you  won't 
inherit  one,  though  you  think  it ;  I  have  marked  you,  sir.  Philip, 
beware  of  your  brother.  Now,  let  me  see  the  parson." 

The  old  man  died ;  the  will  was  read  ;  and  Philip  succeeded  to 
a  rental  of  ^20,000  a  year;  Robert,  to  a  diamond  ring,  a  gold 
repeater,  ^5000,  and  a  curious  collection  of  bottled  snakes. 

CHAPTER  III. 

"  Stay,  delightful  Dream ; 
Let  him  within  his  pleasant  garden  walk ; 
Give  him  her  arm — of  blessings  let  them  talk." — CRABBE. 

"THERE,  Robert,  there  !  now  you  can  see  the  new  stables.  By 
Jove,  they  are  the  completest  thing  in  the  three  kingdoms  ! " 

"Quite  a  pile!  But  is  that  the  house?  You  lodge  your 
horses  more  magnificently  than  yourself." 

"  But  is  it  not  a  beautiful  cottage  ?  To  be  sure,  it  owes  every- 
thing to  Catherine's  taste.  Dear  Catherine  !  " 

Mr.  Robert  Beaufort,  for  this  colloquy  took  place  between  the 
brothers,  as  their  britska  rapidly  descended  the  hill,  at  the  foot 
of  which  lay  Fernside  Cottage  and  its  miniature  demesnes — Mr. 
Robert  Beaufort  pulled  his  travelling-cap  over  his  brows,  and  his 
countenance  fell,  whether  at  the  name  of  Catherine,  or  the  tone 
in  which  the  name  was  uttered ;  and  there  was  a  pause,  broken 
by  a  third  occupant  of  the  britska,  a  youth  of  about  seventeen, 
who  sat  opposite  the  brothers. 

"  And  who  are  those  boys  on  the  lawn,  uncle?  " 

"Who  are  those  boys?"  It  was  a  simple  question,  but  it 
grated  on  the  ear  of  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort ;  it  struck  discord  at  his 


30  XIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

heart.  "  Who  were  those  boys?"  as  they  ran  across  the  sward, 
eager  to  welcome  their  father  home ;  the  westering  sun  shining 
full  on  their  faces — their  young  forms  so  lithe  and  so  graceful — 
their  merry  laughter  ringing  in  the  still  air.  "  Those  boys,'" 
thought  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort,  "the  sons  of  shame,  rob  mine  of 
his  inheritance."  The  elder  brother  turned  round  at  his  nephew's 
question,  and  saw  the  expression  on  Robert's  face.  He  bit  his 
lip,  and  answered,  gravely : 

"  Arthur,  they  are  my  children." 

"  I  did  not  know  you  were  married,"  replied  Arthur,  bending 
forward  to  take  a  better  view  of  his  cousins. 

Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  smiled  bitterly  and  Philip's  brow  grew 
crimson. 

The  carriage  stopped  at  the  little  lodge.  Philip  opened  the  door, 
and  jumped  to  the  ground ;  the  brother  and  his  son  followed.  A 
moment  more,  and  Philip  was  locked  in  Catherine's  arms,  her 
tears  falling  fast  upon  his  breast ;  his  children  plucking  at  his 
coat ;  and  the  younger  one  crying,  in  his  shrill  impatient  treble, 
"  Papa  !  papa  !  you  don't  see  Sidney,  papa!  " 

Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  placed  his  hand  on  his  son's  shoulder,  and 
arrested  his  steps,  as  they  contemplated  the  group  before  them. 

"Arthur,"  said  he,  in  a  hollow  whisper,  "those  children  are 
our  disgrace  and  your  supplanters ;  they  are  bastards  !  bastards  ! 
and  they  are  to  be  his  heirs  !  " 

Arthur  made  no  answer,  but  the  smile  with  which  he  had  hith- 
erto gazed  on  his  new  relations  vanished. 

"Kate,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  as  he  turned  from  Mrs.  Morton, 
and  lifted  his  youngest-born  in  his  arms,  "  this  is  my  brother  and 
his  son  ;  they  are  welcome,  are  they  not  ?  " 

Mr.  Robert  bowed  low,  and  extended  his  hand,  with  stiff  affa- 
bility, to  Mrs.  Morton,  muttering  something  equally  complimen- 
tary and  inaudible. 

The  party  proceeded  toward  the  house.  Philip  and  Arthur 
brought  up  the  rear. 

"Do  you  shoot?"  asked  Arthur,  observing  the  gun  in  his 
cousin's  hand. 

"  Yes.  I  hope  this  season  to  bag  as  many  head  as  my  father  : 
he  is  a  famous  shot.  But  this  is  only  a  single  barrel,  and  an  old- 
fashioned  sort  of  detonator.  My  father  must  get  me  one  of  the 
new  guns.  I  can't  afford  it  myself." 

"  I  should  think  not,"  said  Arthur,  smiling. 

"  Oh,  as  to  that,"  resumed  Philip,  quickly,  and  with  a  heigh- 
tened color,  ' '  I  could  have  managed  it  very  well  if  I  had  not  given 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  3! 

thirty  guineas  for  a  brace  of  pointers  the  other  day  :  they  are  the 
best  dogs  you  ever  saw." 

"  Thirty  guineas  !  "  echoed  Arthur,  looking  with  naive  surprise 
at  the  speaker  ;  -"  why,  how  old  are  you  ?  " 

' '  Just  fifteen  last  birthday.  Holla,  John  !  John  Green  !  ' ' 
cried  the  young  gentleman  in  an  imperious  voice,  to  one  of  the 
gardeners,  who  was  crossing  the  lawn,  "  see  that  the  nets  are 
taken  down  to  the  lake  to-morrow,  and  that  my  tent  is  pitched 
properly,  by  the  lime-trees,  by  nine  o'clock.  I  hope  you  will 
understand  me  this  time  :  Heaven  knows  you  take  a  deal  of 
telling  before  you  understand  anything  !  " 

"Yes,  Mr.  Philip,"  said  the  man,  bowing  obsequiously ;  and 
then  muttered,  as  he  went  off,  •'  Drat  the  nat'rel !  he  speaks  to  a 
poor  man  as  if  he  warn't  flesh  and  blood." 

'  Does  your  father  keep  hunters?  "  asked  Philip. 
No." 

'Why?" 

'  Perhaps  one  reason  may  be,  that  he  is  not  rich  enough." 

'  Oh  !  that's  a  pity.  Never  mind,  we'll  mount  you,  whenever 
you  like  to  pay  us  a  visit." 

Young  Arthur  drew  himself  up,  and  his  air,  naturally  frank 
and  gentle,  became  haughty  and  reserved.  Philip  gazed  on  him, 
and  felt  offended  j  he  scarce  knew  why,  but  from  that  moment  he 
conceived  a  dislike  to  his  cousin. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

"  For  a  man  is  helpless  and  vain,  of  a  condition  so  exposed  to  calamity  that 

a  raisin  is  able  to  kill  him  :  any  trooper  out  of  the  Egyptian  army a  fly  can 

do  it,  when  it  goes  on  God's  errand." — JEREMY  TAYLOR,  On  the  Deceitful- 
ness  of  the  Heart. 

THE  two  brothers  sat  at  their  wine  after  dinner.  Robert  sipped 
claret,  the  sturdy  Philip  quaffed  his  more  generous  port.  Cath- 
erine and  the  boys  might  be  seen  at  a  little  distance,  and  by  the 
light  of  a  soft  August  moon,  among  the  shrubs  and  bosquets  of 
the  lawn. 

Philip  Beaufort  was  about  five-and -forty,  tall,  robust,  nay,  of 
great  strength  of  frame  and  limb  ;  with  a  countenance  extremely 
winning,  not  only  from  the  comeliness  of  its  features,  but  its  frank- 
ness, manliness,  and  good-nature.  His  was  the  bronzed,  rich 
complexion,  the  inclination  towards  embonpoint,  the  athletic  girth 
of  chest,  which  denote  redundant  health,  and  mirthful  temper, 
and  sanguine  blood.  Robert,  who  had  lived  the  life  of  cities, 


2 2  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

was  a  year  younger  than  his  brother ;  nearly  as  tall,  but  pale, 
meagre,  stooping,  and  with  a  care-worn,  anxious,  hungry  look, 
which  made  the  smile  that  hung  upon  his  lips  seem  hollow  and 
artificial.  His  dress,  though  plain,  was  neat  and  studied ;  his 
manner,  bland  and  plausible ;  his  voice,  sweet  and  low :  there 
was  that  about  him  which,  if  it  did  not  win  liking,  tended  to 
excite  respect — a  certain  decorum,  a  nameless  propriety  of  appear- 
ance and  bearing,  that  approached  a  little  to  formality  :  his  every 
movement,  slow  and  measured,  was  that  of  one  who  paced  in  the 
circle  that  fences  round  the  habits  and  usages  of  the  world. 

"  Yes,"  said  Philip,  "  I  had  always  decided  to  take  this  step, 
whenever  my  poor  uncle's  death  should  allow  me  to  do  so.  You 
have  seen  Catherine,  but  you  do  not  know  half  her  good  quali- 
ties :  she  would  grace  any  station,  and,  besides,  she  nursed  me  so 
carefully  last  year,  when  I  broke  my  collar-bone  in  that  cursed 
steeple-chase.  Egad,  I  am  getting  too  heavy,  and  growing  too  old 
for  such  schoolboy  pranks." 

"I  have  no  doubt  of  Mrs.  Morton's  excellence,  and  I  honor 
your  motives ;  still,  when  you  talk  of  her  gracing  any  station, 
you  must  not  forget,  my  dear  brother,  that  she  will  be  no  more 
received  as  Mrs.  Beaufort  than  she  is  now  as  Mrs.  Morton." 

"But  I  tell  you,  Robert,  that  I  am  really  married  to  her 
already ;  that  she  would  never  have  left  her  home,  but  on  that 
condition ;  that  we  were  married  the  very  day  we  met  after  her 
flight." 

Robert's  thin  lips  broke  into  a  slight  sneer  of  incredulity. 

' '  My  dear  brother,  you  do  right  to  say  this ;  any  man  in  your 
situation  would  say  the  same.  But  I  know  that  my  uncle  took 
every  pains  to  ascertain  if  the  report  of  a  private  marriage  were 
true." 

"And  you  helped  him  in  the  search.     Eh,  Bob?" 

Bob  slightly  blushed.     Philip  went  on  : 

"  Ha,  ha  !  to  be  sure  you  did ;  you  knew  that  such  a  discovery 
would  have  done  for  me  in  the  old  gentleman's  good  opinion. 
But  I  blinded  you  both,  ha,  ha !  The  fact  is,  that  we  were  mar- 
ried with  the  greatest  privacy ;  that  even  now,  I  own,  it  would  be 
difficult  for  Catherine  herself  to  establish  the  fact,  unless  I  wished 
it.  I  am  ashamed  to  think  that  I  have  never  even  told  her  where 
I  keep  the  main  proof  of  the  marriage.  I  induced  one  witness  to 
leave  the  country,  the  other  must  be  long  since  dead  :  my  poor 
friend,  too,  who  officiated,  is  no  more.  Even  the  register,  Bob, 
the  register  itself,  has  been  destroyed :  and,  yet,  notwithstanding, 
I  will  prove  the  ceremony  and  clear  up  poor  Catherine's  fame  ; 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  33 

for  I  have  the  attested  copy  of  the  register  safe  and  sound. 
Catherine  not  married  !  Why,  look  at  her,  man  !  " 

Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  glanced  at  the  window  for  a  moment,  but 
his  countenance  was  still  that  of  one  unconvinced. 

"  Well,  brother,"  said  he,  dipping  his  fingers  in  the  water-glass, 
"it  is  not  for  me  to  contradict  you.  It  is  a  very  curious  tale  : 
parson  dead,  witnesses  missing.  But  still,  as  I  said  before,  if  you 
are  resolved  on  a  public  marriage,  you  are  wise  to  insist  that  there 
has  been  a  previous  private  one.  Yet,  believe  me,  Philip,"  con- 
tinued Robert,  with  solemn  earnestness,  "the  world — " 

"  D the  world  !     What  do  I  care  for  the  world !     We  don't 

want  to  go  to  routs  and  balls,  and  give  dinners  to  fine  people.  I 
shall  live  much  the  same  as  I  have  always  done ;  only,  I  shall  now 
keep  the  hounds — they  are  very  indifferently  kept  at  present — and 
have  a  yacht ;  and  engage  the  best  masters  for  the  boys.  Phil 
wants  to  go  to  Eton,  but  I  know  what  Eton  is :  poor  fellow !  his 
feelings  might  be  hurt  there,  if  others  are  as  sceptical  as  yourself. 
I  suppose  my  old  friends  will  not  be  less  civil,  now  I  have  £20,- 
ooo  a  year.  And  as  for  the  society  of  women,  between  you  and 
me,  I  don't  care  a  rush  for  any  woman  but  Catherine:  poor 
Katty  !  " 

"  Well,  you  are  the  best  judge  of  your  own  affairs :  you  don't 
misinterpret  my  motives?  " 

"  My  dear  Bob,  no.  I  am  quite  sensible  how  kind  it  is  in  you 
— a  man  of  your  starch  habits  and  strict  views,  coming  here  to 
pay  a  mark  of  respect  to  Kate  (Mr.  Robert  turned  uneasily  in  his 
chair)  even  before  you  knew  of  the  private  marriage,  and  I  am 
sure  I  don't  blame  you  for  never  having  done  it  before.  You  did 
quite  right  to  try  your  chance  with  my  uncle." 

Mr.  Robert  turned  in  his  chair  again,  still  more  uneasily,  and 
cleared  his  voice  as  if  to  speak.  But  Philip  tossed  off  his  wine, 
and  proceeded,  without  heeding  his  brother : 

' '  And  though  the  poor  old  man  does  not  seem  to  have  liked 
you  the  better  for  consulting  his  scruples,  yet  we  must  make  up 
for  the  partiality  of  his  will.  Let  me  see :  what,  with  your  wife's 
fortune,  you  muster  ^2,000  a  year?" 

"Only  ^£1,500,  Philip,  and  Arthur's  education  is  growing 
expensive.  Next  year  he  goes  to  college.  He  is  certainly  very 
clever,  and  I  have  great  hopes — " 

"  That  he  will  do  honor  to  us  all;  so  have  I.     He  is  a  noble 

.  young  fellow ;  and  I  think  my  Philip  may  find  a  great  deal  to 

learn  from  him ;  Phil  is  a  sad,  idle  dog ;  but  with  a  devil  of  a 

spirit,  and  sharp  as  a  needle.     I  wish  you  could  see  him  ride. 

Well,  to  return  to  Arthur.     Don't  trouble  yourself  about  his  edu- 


34  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

cation  ;  that  shall  be  my  care.  He  shall  go  to  Christ  Church — a 
gentleman-commoner,  of  course;  and  when  he's  of  age,  we'll  get 
him  into  Parliament.  Now  for  yourself,  Bob.  I  shall  sell  the 
town-house  in  Berkeley  Square,  and  whatever  it  brings  you  shall 
have.  Besides  that,  I'll  add  ,£1,500  a  year  to  your  ^£1,500 — so 
that's  said  and  done.  Pshaw !  brothers  should  be  brothers. 
Let's  come  out  and  play  with  the  boys  !  " 

The  two  Beauforts  stepped  through  the  open  casement  into  the 
lawn. 

' '  You  look  pale,  Bob ;  all  you  London  fellows  do.  As  for  me, 
I  feel  as  strong  as  a  horse ;  much  better  than  when  I  was  one  of 
your  gay  dogs  straying  loose  about  the  town  !  'Gad,  I  have  never 
had  a  moment's  ill  health,  except  from  a  fall  now  and  then.  I 
feel  as  if  I  should  live  forever,  and  that's  the  reason  why  I  could 
never  make  a  will." 

"  Have  you  never,  then,  made  your  will !  " 

"  Never  as  yet.  Faith,  till  now,  I  had  little  enough  to  leave. 
But  now  that  all  this  great  Beaufort  property  is  at  my  own  dis- 
posal, I  must  think  of  Kate's  jointure.  By  Jove  !  now  I  speak  of 

it,  I  will  ride  to to-morrow,  and  consult  the  lawyer  there 

both  about  the  will  and  the  marriage.  You  will  stay  for  the 
wedding  ! " 

"  Why,  I  must  go  into shire  to-morrow  evening,  to  place 

Arthur  with  his  tutor.  But  I'll  return  for  the  wedding,  if  you 
particularly  wish  it;  only  Mrs.  Beaufort  is  a  woman  of  very 
strict — " 

"I  do  particularly  wish  it,"  interrupted  Philip  gravely ;  ''for 
I  desire,  for  Catherine's  sake,  that  you,  my  sole  surviving  relation, 
may  not  seem  to  withhold  your  countenance  from  an  act  of  justice 
to  her.  And  as  for  your  wife,  I  fancy  ^£  1,500  a  year  would 
reconcile  her  to  my  marrying  out  of  the  Penitentiary." 

Mr.  Robert  bowed  his  head,  coughed  huskily,  and  said,  "I 
appreciate  your  generous  affection,  Philip." 

The  next  morning,  while  the  elder  parties  were  still  over  the 
breakfast-table,  the  young  people  were  in  the  grounds :  it  was  a 
lovely  day,  one  of  the  last  of  the  luxuriant  August ;  and  Arthur, 
as  he  looked  round,  thought  he  had  never  seen  a  more  beautiful 
place.  It  was,  indeed,  just  the  spot  to  captivate  a  youthful  and 
susceptible  fancy.  The  village  of  Fernside,  though  in  one  of  the 
counties  adjoining  Middlesex,  and  as  near  to  London  as  the 
owner's  passionate  pursuits  of  the  field  would  permit,  was  yet  as 
rural  and  sequestered  as  if  an  hundred  miles  distant  from  the 
smoke  of  the  huge  city.  Though  the  dwelling  was  called  a  cot- 
tage, Philip  had  enlarged  the  griginal  modest  building  into  a  villa 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  35 

of  some  pretensions.  On  either  side  a  graceful  and  well-propor- 
tioned portico,  stretched  verandahs,  covered  with  roses  and  cle- 
matis ;  to  the  right  extended  a  range  of  costly  conservatories, 
terminating  in  vistas  of  trellis-work  which  formed  those  elegant 
allies  called  rosaries,  and  served  to  screen  the  more  useful  gardens 
from  view.  The  lawn,  smooth  and  even,  was  studded  with  Amer- 
ican plants  and  shrubs  in  flower,  and  bounded  on  one  side  by  a 
small  lake,  on  the  opposite  bank  of  which  limes  and  cedars  threw 
their  shadows  over  the  clear  waves.  On  the  other  side  a  light 
fence  separated  the  grounds  from  a  large  paddock,  in  which  three 
or  four  hunters  grazed  in  indolent  enjoyment.  It  was  one  of  those 
cottages  which  bespeak  the  ease  and  luxury  not  often  found  in 
more  ostentatious  mansions;  an  abode  which,  at  sixteen,  the  vis- 
itor contemplates,  with  vague  notions  of  poetry  and  love ;  which, 
at  forty,  he  might  think  dull  and  d — d  expensive ;  which,  at  sixty, 
he  would  pronounce  to  be  damp  in  winter,  and  full  of  earwigs  in 
the  summer.  Master  Philip  was  leaning  on  his  gun ;  Master  Sid- 
ney was  chasing  a  peacock  butterfly;  Arthur  was  silently  gazing 
on  the  shining  lake  and  the  still  foliage  that  drooped  over  its  sur- 
face. In  the  countenance  of  this  youngvnan  there  was  something 
that  excited  a  certain  interest.  He  was  less  handsome  than  Philip, 
but  the  expression  of  his  face  was  more  prepossessing.  There 
was  something  of  pride  in  the  forehead  ;  but  of  good  nature,  not 
unmixed  with  irresolution  and  weakness,  in  the  curves  of  the  mouth. 
He  was  more  delicate  of  frame  than  Philip ;  and  the  color  of  his 
complexion  was  not  that  of  a  robust  constitution.  His  move- 
ments were  graceful  and  self-possessed,  and  he  had  his  father's 
sweetness  of  voice. 

"This  is  really  beautiful !  I  envy  you,  cousin  Philip." 

"  Has  not  your  father  got  a  country-house  ?  " 

"  No :  we  live  either  in  London  or  at   some  hot,  crowded 
watering-place." 

"Yes;  this  is  very  nice  during  the  shooting  and  hunting  sea- 
son. But  my  old  nurse  says  we  shall  have  a  much  finer  place 
now.  I  liked  this  very  well  till  I  saw  Lord  Belville's  place.  But 
it  is  very  unpleasant  not  to  have  the  finest  house  in  the  county : 
aut  Cizsar  aut  nullus,  that's  my  motto.  Ah !  do  you  see  that 
swallow  ?  I'll  bet  you  a  guinea  I  hit  it." 

"No,  poor  thing !  don't  hurt  it."  But  ere  the  remonstrance 
was  uttered,  the  bird  lay  quivering  on  the  ground. 

"It  is  just  September,  and  one  must  keep  one's  hand  in,"  said 
Philip,  as  he  reloaded  his  gun. 

To  Arthur  this  action  seemed  a  wanton  cruelty  ;  it  was  rather 
the  wanton  recklessness  which  belongs  to  a  wild  boy  accustomed 


36  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

to  gratify  the  impulse  of  the  moment, — the  recklessness  which  is 
not  cruelty  in  the  boy,  but  which  prosperity  may  pamper  into 
cruelty  in  the  man.  And  scarce  had  he  reloaded  his  gun  before 
the  neigh  of  a  young  colt  came  from  the  neighboring  paddock, 
and  Philip  bounded  to  the  fence.  "  He  calls  me,  poor  fellow ; 
you  shall  see  him  feed  from  my  hand.  Run  in  for  a  piece  of 
bread — a  large  piece,  Sidney."  The  boy  and  the  animal  seemed 
to  understand  each  other.  "I  see  you  don't  like  horses,"  he  said 
to  Arthur.  "As  for  me,  I  love  dogs,  horses — every  dumb  creature." 

"  Except  swallows  !  "  said  Arthur  with  a  half-smile,  and  a  little 
surprised  at  the  inconsistency  of  the  boast. 

"  Oh!  that  is  sport, — all  fair  :  it  is  not  to  hurt  the  swallow — 
it  is  to  obtain  skill,"  said  Philip,  coloring;  and  then,  as  if  not 
quite  easy  with  his  own  definition,  he  turned  away  abruptly. 

"This  is  dull  work;  suppose  we  fish.  By  Jove!  (he  had 
caught  his  father's  expletive)  that  blockhead  has  put  the  tent  on 
the  wrong  side  of  the  lake,  after  all.  Holla,  you,  sir  !  "  and  the 
unhappy  gardener  looked  up  from  his  flower-beds ;  "what  ails 
you  !  I  have  a  great  mind  to  tell  my  father  of  you ;  you  grow 
stupider  every  day.  I  told  you  to  put  the  tent  under  the  lime- 
trees." 

"  We  could  not  manage  it,  sir;  the  boughs  were  in  the  way." 

"  And  why  did  not  you  cut  the  boughs,  blockhead  ?  " 

"  I  did  not  dare  do  so,  sir,  without  master's  orders,"  said  the 
man  doggedly. 

"My  orders  are  sufficient,  I  should  think;  so  none  of  your 
impertinence,"  cried  Philip,  with  a  raised  color;  and  lifting  his 
hand,  in  which  he  held  his  ramrod,  he  shook  it  menacingly  over 
the  gardener's  head,  "  I've  a  great  mind  to 

"What's  the  matter,  Philip  ?  "  cried  the  good-humored  voice  of 
his  father.  "Fie!" 

"  This  fellow  does  not  mind  what  I  say,  sir." 

"  I  did  not  like  to  cut  the  boughs  of  the  lime-trees  without 
your  orders,  sir,"  said  the  gardener. 

"No,  it  would  be  a  pity  to  cut  them.  You  should  consult  me 
there,  Master  Philip;"  and  the  father  shook  him  by  the  collar 
with  a  good-natured,  and  affectionate,  but  rough  sort  of  caress. 

"Be  quiet,  father!"  said  the  boy,  petulantly  and  proudly; 
"or,"  he  added,  in  a  lower  voice,  but  one  which  showed  emotion, 
"  my  cousin  may  think  you  mean  less  kindly  than  you  always  do, 
sir." 

The  father  was  touched  :  "Go  and  cut  the  lime-boughs,  John ; 
and  always  do  as  Mr,  Philip  tells  you." 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  37 

The  mother  was  behind,  and  she  sighed  audibly.  "Ah! 
dearest,  I  fear  you  will  spoil  him." 

"  Is  he  not  your  son?  And  do  we  not  owe  him  the  more  respect 
for  having  hitherto  allowed  others  to — " 

He  stopped,  and  the  mother  could  say  no  more.  And  thus  it 
was,  that  this  boy  of  powerful  character  and  strong  passions  had, 
from  motives  the  most  amiable,  been  pampered  from  the  darling 
into  the  despot. 

"  And  now,  Kate,  I  will,  as  I  told  you  last  night,  ride  over  to 

and  fix  the  earliest  day  for  our  public  marriage  :  I  will  ask  the 

lawyer  to  dine  here,  to  talk  about  the  proper  steps  for  proving  the 
private  one." 

"Will  that  be  difficult?"  asked  Catherine,  with  natural 
anxiety. 

"  No ;  for  if  you  remember,  I  had  the  precaution  to  get  an 
examined  copy  of  the  register  ;  otherwise,  I  own  to  you,  I  should 
have  been  alarmed.  I  don't  know  what  has  become  of  Smith.  I 
heard  some  time  since  from  his  father  that  he  had  left  the  colony  ; 
and  (I  never  told  you  before ;  it  would  have  made  you  uneasy) 
once,  a  few  years  ago,  when  my  uncle  again  got  it  into  his  head 
that  we  might  be  married,  I  was  afraid  poor  Caleb's  successor 

might,  by  chance,  betray  us.     So  I  went  over  to  A myself, 

being  near  it  when  I  was  staying  with  Lord  C ,  in  order  to 

see  how  far  it  might  be  necessary  to  secure  the  parson  ;  and,  only 
think !  I  found  an  accident  had  happened  to  the  register ;  so,  as 
the  clergyman  could  know  nothing,  I  kept  my  own  counsel.  How 
lucky  I  have  the  copy !  No  doubt  the  lawyer  will  set  all  to  rights ; 
and,  while  I  am  making  settlements,  I  may  as  well  make  my  will. 
I  have  plenty  for  both  boys,  but  the  dark  one  must  be  the  heir. 
Does  he  not  look  born  to  be  an  eldest  son  ?  ' ' 

"Ah,  Philip!  " 

"  Pshaw  !  one  don't  die  the  sooner  for  making  a  will.  Have  I 
the  air  of  a  man  in  a  consumption  !  " — and  the  sturdy  sportsman 
glanced  complacently  at  the  strength  and  symmetry  of  his  manly 
limbs.  "Come,  Phil,  let's  go  to  the  stables.  Now,  Robert,  I 
will  show  you  what  is  better  worth  seeing  than  those  miserable 
flower-beds."  So  saying,  Mr.  Beaufort  led  the  way  to  the  court- 
yard at  the  back  of  the  cottage.  Catherine  and  Sidney  remained 
on  the  lawn ;  the  rest  followed  the  host.  The  grooms,  of  whom 
Beaufort  was  the  idol,  hastened  to  show  how  well  the  horses  had 
thriven  in  his  absence. 

"Do  you  see  how  Brown  Bess  has  come  on  sir:  but,  to  be 
sure,  Master  Philip  keeps  her  in  exercise.     Ah,  sir,  he  will  be  as 
a.  rjder  as  your  honor,  gne  of  these,  days," 


38  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"He  ought  to  be  a  better,  Tom ;  for  I  think  he;ll  never  have  my 
weight  to  carry.  Well,  saddle  Brown  Bess  for  Mr.  Philip.  What 
horse  shall  I  take?  Ah  !  here's  my  old  friend,  Puppet !  ' 

"I  don't  know  what's  come  to  Puppet,  sir;  he's  off  his  feed, 
and  turned  sulky.  I  tried  him  over  the  bar  yesterday ;  but  he 
was  quite  restive  like." 

"  The  devil  he  was !  So,  so,  old  boy,  you  shall  go  over  the  six- 
barred  gate  to-day,  or  we'll  know  why."  And  Mr.  Beaufort  pat- 
ted the  sleek  neck  of  his  favorite  hunter.  ' '  Put  the  saddle  on 
him,  Tom." 

"  Yes,  your  honor.  I  sometimes  think  he  is  hurt  in  the  loins 
somehow;  he  don't  take  to  his  leaps  kindly,  and  he  always  tries 
to  bite  when  we  bridles  him.  Be  quiet,  sir  !  " 

"Only  his  airs,"  said  Philip.  "I  did  not  know  this,  or  I 
would  have  taken  him  over  the  gate.  Why  did  not  you  tell  me, 
Tom?" 

"  Lord  love  you,  sir  !  because  you  have  such  a  spurret ;  and  if 
anything  had  come  to  you " 

"  Quite  right :  you  are  not  weight  enough  for  Puppet,  my  boy ; 
and  he  never  did  like  any  one  to  back  him  but  myself.  What  say 
you,  brother,  will  you  ride  with  us?  " 

"  No,  I  must  go  to to-day  with  Arthur.  I  have  engaged 

the  post-horses  at  two  o'clock ;  but  I  shall  be  with  you  to-morrow 
or  the  day  after.  You  see  his  tutor  expects  him  ;  and  as  he  is 
backward  in  his  mathematics,  he  has  no  time  to  lose. ' ' 

"Well,  then,  good-by,  nephew!"  and  Beaufort  slipped  a 
pocket-book  into  the  boy's  hand.  "  Tush  !  whenever  you  want 
money,  don't  trouble  your  father — write  to  me — we  shall  be  always 
glad  to  see  you  ;  and  you  must  teach  Philip  to  like  his  book  a  lit- 
tle better— -eh,  Phil?" 

"No,  father;  /shall  be  rich  enough  to  do  without  books," 
said  Philip,  rather  coarsely ;  but  then  observing  the  heightened 
color  of  his  cousin,  he  went  up  to  him,  and  with  a  generous  im- 
pulse said,  "Arthur,  you  admire  this  gun;  pray  accept  it.  Nay, 
don't  be  shy ;  I  can  have  as  many  as  I  like  for  the  asking  :  you're 
not  so  well  off,  you  know." 

The  intention  was  kind,  but  the  manner  was  so  patronizing  that 
Arthur  felt  offended.  He  put  back  the  gun,  and  said,  drily,  "  I 
shall  have  no  occasion  for  the  gun,  thank  you." 

If  Arthur  was  offended  by  the  offer,  Philip  was  much  more  of- 
fended by  the  refusal.  "As  you  like  ;  I  hate  pride,"  said  he; 
and  he  gave  the  gun  to  the  groom  as  he  vaulted  into  his  saddle, 
with  the  lightness  of  a  young  Mercury.  "  Come,  father  !  " 

Mr.  Beaufort  had  now  mounted  his  favorite  hunter — a  large, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  39 

powerful  horse  well  known  for  its  prowess  in  the  field.  The  rider 
trotted  him  once  or  twice  through  the  spacious  yard. 

"  Nonsense,  Tom  :  no  more  hurt  in  the  loins  than  I  am.  Open 
that  gate  ;  we  will  go  across  the  paddock,  and  take  the  gate  yon- 
der— the  old  six-bar — eh,  Phil  ?  " 

"  Capital !— to  be  sure  ! — " 

The  gate  was  opened ;  the  grooms  stood  watchful  to  see  the 
leap,  and  a  kindred  curiosity  arrested  Robert  Beaufort  and  his  son. 

How  well  they  looked  !  those  two  horsemen ;  the  ease,  light- 
ness, spirit  of  the  one,  with  the  fine-limbed  and  fiery  steed  that 
literally  "  bounded  beneath  him  as  a  barb,"  seemingly  as  gay,  as 
ardent,  and  as  haughty  as  the  boy-rider.  And  the  manly,  and 
almost  herculean,  form  of  the  elder  Beaufort,  which,  from  the 
bouyancy  of  its  movements,  and  the  supple  grace  that  belongs  to 
the  perfect  mastership  of  any  athletic  art,  possessed  an  elegance, 
and  dignity,  especially  on  horseback,  which  rarely  accompanies 
proportions  equally  sturdy  and  robust.  There  was  indeed  some- 
thing knightly  and  chivalrous  in  the  bearing  of  the  elder  Beaufort 
— in  his  handsome  aquiline  features,  the  erectness  of  his  mien, 
the  very  wave  of  his  hand,  as  he  spurred  from  the  yard. 

"  What  a  fine-looking  fellow  my  uncle  is  !  "  said  Arthur,  with 
involuntary  admiration. 

"  Ay,  an  excellent  life;  amazingly  strong  !  "  returned  the  pale 
father,  with  a  slight  sigh. 

"Philip,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  as  they  cantered  across  the  pad- 
dock, "I  think  the  gate  is  too  much  for  you.  I  will  just  take 
Puppet  over,  and  then  we  will  open  it  for  you." 

"  Pooh,  my  dear  father  I  you  don't  know  how  I'm  improved  !" 
And  slackening  the  rein,  and  touching  the  side  of  his  horse,  the 
young  rider  darted  forward  and  cleared  the  gate,  which  was  of  no 
common  height,  with  an  ease  that  extorted  a  loud  bravo  from  the 
proud  father. 

"Now,  Puppet,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  spurring  his  own  horse. 
The  animal  cantered  towards  the  gate,  and  then  suddenly  turned 
round  with  an  impatient  and  angry  snort.  "  For  shame,  Puppet! 
for  shame,  old  boy  !  "  said  the  sportsman,  wheeling  him  again  to 
the  barrier.  The  horse  shook  his  head,  as  if  in  remonstrance ; 
but  the  spur  vigorously  applied,  showed  him  that  his  master  would 
not  listen  to  his  mute  reasonings.  He  bounded  forward,  made  at 
the  gate,  struck  his  hoofs  against  the  top-bar — fell  forward,  and 
threw  his  rider  head-foremost  on  the  road  beyond.  The  horse  rose 
instantly  ;  not  so  the  master.  The  son  dismounted,  alarmed  and 
terrified.  His  father  was  speechless  !  and  blood  gushed  from  the 
mouth  and  nostrils,  as  the  head  drooped  heavily  on  the  boy's 


40  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

breast.  The  bystanders  had  witnessed  the  fall ;  they  crowded  to 
the  spot ;  they  took  the  fallen  man  from  the  weak  arms  of  tne 
son ;  the  head  groom  examined  him  with  the  eye  of  one  who  had 
picked  up  science  from  his  experience  in  such  casualties. 

"  Speak,  brother !  where  are  you  hurt?"  exclaimed  Robert 
Beaufort. 

"  He  will  never  speak  more!"  said  the  groom,  bursting  into 
tears.  "  His  neck  is  broken  !  " 

'•Send  for  the  nearest  surgeon,"  cried  Mr.  Robert.  "Good 
God  !  boy!  don't  mount  that  devilish  horse  !  " 

But  Arthur  had  already  leaped  on  the  unhappy  steed,  which 
had  been  the  cause  of  this  appalling  affliction.  "  Which  way?" 

"Straighten  to ,  only  two  miles — every  one  knows  Mr. 

Powis's  house.  God  bless  you  !  "  said  the  groom. 

Arthur  vanished. 

"Lift  him  carefully,  and  take  him  to  the  house,"  said  Mr. 
Robert.  "  My  poor  brother  !  my  dear  brother  !  " 

He  was  interrupted  by  a  cry,  a  single  shrill  heart-breaking  cry; 
and  Philip  fell  senseless  to  the  ground. 

No  one  heeded  him  at  that  hour — no  one  heeded  the  fatherless 
BASTARD.  "  Gently,  gently,"  said  Mr,  Robert,  as  he  followed 
the  servants  and  their  load.  And  he  then  muttered  to  himself, 
and  his  sallow  cheek  grew  bright,  and  his  breath  came  short: 
"  He  has  made  no  will !  He  never  made  a  will !  " 

CHAPTER  V. 

"  Constance.  O  boy,  then  where  art  thou  ? 

.  .  .  What  becomes  of  me  ?  " — King  "John. 

IT  was  three  days  after  the  death  of  Philip  Beaufort — for  the 
surgeon  arrived  only  to  confirm  the  judgment  of  the  groom.  In 
the  drawing-room  of  the  cottage,  the  windows  closed,  lay  the  body, 
in  its  coffin,  the  lid  not  yet  nailed  down.  There,  prostrate  on 
the  floor,  tearless,  speechless,  was  the  miserable  Catherine ;  poor 
Sidney,  too  young  to  comprehend  all  his  loss,  sobbing  at  her  side ; 
while  Philip  apart,  seated  beside  the  coffin,  gazed  abstractedly  on 
that  cold,  rigid  face,  which  had  never  known  one  frown  for  his 
boyish  follies. 

In  another  room,  that  had  been  appropriated  to  the  late  owner, 
called  his  study,  sat  Robert  Beaufort.  Everything  in  this  room 
spoke  of  the  deceased.  Partially  separated  from  the  rest  of  the 
house,  it  communicated  by  a  winding  staircase  with  a  chamber 
above,  to  which  Philip  had  beeii  wont  to  betake  himself  when- 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  41 

ever  he  returned  ]ate,  and  over-exhilarated,  from  some  rural  feast 
crowning  a  hard  day's  hunt.  Above  a  quaint  old-fashioned 
bureau  of  Dutch  workmanship  (which  Philip  had  picked  up  at  a 
sale  in  the  earlier  years  of  his  marriage)  was  a  portrait  of  Cath- 
erine taken  in  the  bloom  of  her  youth.  On  a  peg  on  the  door 
that  led  to  the  staircase,  still  hung  his  rough  driving-coat.  The 
window  commanded  the  view  of  the  paddock,  in  which  the  worn- 
out  hunter  or  the  unbroken  colt  grazed  at  will.  Around  the  walls 
of  the  "study"  (a  strange  misnomer !)  hung  prints  of  celebrated 
fox-hunts  and  renowned  steeple- chases ;  guns,  fishing  rods,  and 
foxes'  brushes,  ranged  with  a  sportsman's  neatness,  supplied  the 
place  of  books.  On  the  mantel-piece  lay  a  cigar-case,  a  well- 
worn  volume  on  the  Veterinary  Art,  and  the  last  number  of  The 
Sporting  Magazine.  And  in  that  room — thus  witnessing  of  the 
hardy,  masculine,  rural  life,  that  had  passed  away — sallow,  stoop- 
ing, town-worn,  sat,  I  say,  Robert  Beaufort,  the  heir-at-law, — 
alone  :  for  the  very  day  of  the  death  he  had  remanded  his  son 
home  with  the  letter  that  announced  to  his  wife  the  change  in 
their  fortunes,  and  directed  her  to  send  his  lawyer  post-haste  to 
the  house  of  death.  The  bureau,  and  the  drawers,  and  the  boxes 
which  contained  the  papers  of  the  deceased,  were  open  ;  their 
contents  had  been  ransacked ;  no  certificate  of  the  private  mar- 
riage, no  hint  of  such  an  event ;  not  a  paper  found  to  signify  the 
last  wishes  of  the  rich  dead  man. 

He  had  died,  and  made  no  sign.  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort's  coun- 
tenance was  still  and  composed. 

A  knock  at  the  door  was  heard ;  the  lawyer  entered. 

"  Sir,  the  undertakers  are  here,  and  Mr.  Greaves  has  ordered 
the  bells  to  be  rung  :  at  three  o'clock  he  will  read  the  service." 

"  I  am  obliged  to  you,  Blackwell,  for  taking  these  melancholy 
offices  on  yourself.  My  poor  brother  !  it  is  so  sudden  !  But  the 
funeral,  you  say,  ought  to  take  place  to-day?" 

"  The  weather  is  so  warm,"  said  the'  lawyer,  wiping  his  fore- 
head. As  he  spoke,  the  Death-bell  was  heard. 

There  was  a  pause. 

"  It  would  have  been  a  terrible  shock  to  Mrs.  Morton  if  she  had 
been  his  wife,"  observed  Mr.  Blackwell.  "  But  I  suppose  persons 
of  that  kind  have  very  little  feeling.  I  must  say,  that  it  was  for- 
tunate for  the  family,  that  the  event  happened  before  Mr.  Beau- 
fort was  wheedled  into  so  improper  a  marriage." 
"It  was  fortunate,  Blackwell.  Have  you  ordered  the  post- 
horses?  I  shall  start  immediately  after  the  funeral." 

"  What  is  to  be  done  with  the  cottage,  sir?  " 

"  You  may  advertise  it  for  sale." 


42  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

"  And  Mrs.  Morton  and  the  boys  ?  " 

"  Hum we  will  consider.     She  was  a  tradesman's  daughter. 

I  think  I  ought  to  provide  for  her  suitably,  eh?  " 

"  It  is  more  than  the  world  could  expect  from  you,  sir :  it  is 
very  different  from  a  wife." 

"  Oh,  very  !  very  much  so,  indeed  !  Just  ring  for  a  lighted 
candle,  we  will  seal  up  these  boxes.  And — I  think  I  could  take  a 
sandwich.  Poor  Philip  ! ' ' 

The  funeral  was  over;  the  dead  shovelled  away.  What  a 
strange  thing  it  does  seem,  that  that  very  form  which  we  prized 
so  charily,  for  which  we  prayed  the  winds  to  be  gentle,  which  we 
lapped  from  the  cold  in  our  arms,  from  whose  footstep  we  would 
have  removed  a  stone,  should  be  suddenly  thrust  out  of  sight ; 
an  abomination  that  the  earth  must  not  look  upon ;  a  despicable 
loathsomeness,  to  be  concealed  and  to  be  forgotten  !  And  this 
same  composition  of  bone  and  muscle  that  was  yesterday  so 
strong — which  men  respected,  and  women  loved,  and  children 
clung  to — to-day  so  lamentably  powerless,  unable  to  defend  or 
protect  those  who  lay  nearest  to  its  heart ;  its  riches  wrested  from 
it,  its  wishes  spat  upon,  its  influence  expiring  with  its  last  sigh < 
A  breath  from  its  lips  making  all  that  mighty  difference  between 
what  it  was  and  what  it  is  ! 

The  post-horses  were  at  the  door  as  the  funeral  processior 
returned  to  the  house. 

Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  bowed  slightly  to  Mrs.  Morton,  and  said 
with  his  pocket-handkerchief  still  before  his  eyes: 

"  I  will  write  to  you  in  a  few  days,  ma'am;  you  will  find  tha-' 
I  shall  not  forget  you.  The  cottage  will  be  sold;  but  we  sha'n't 
hurry  you.  Good-by,  ma'am;  good-by,  my  boys;  "  and  he  pat- 
ted his  nephews  on  the  head. 

Philip  winced  aside,  and  scowled  haughtily  at  his  uncle,  who 
muttered  to  himself,  "  That  boy  will  come  to  no  good  !  "  Little 
Sidney  put  his  hand  into  the  rich  man's,  and  looked  up,  plead- 
ingly, into  his  face.  "  Can't  you  say  something  pleasant  to  poor 
mamma,  Uncle  Robert  ?  ' ' 

Mr.  Beaufort  hemmed  huskily,  and  entered  the  britska — it  had 
been  his  brother's;  the  lawyer  followed,  and  they  drove  away. 

A  week  after  the  funeral,  Philip  stole  from  the  house  into  the 
conservatory,  to  gather  some  fruit  for  his  mother;  she  had 
scarcely  touched  food  since  Beaufort's  death.  She  was  worn  to 
a  shadow ;  her  hair  had  turned  gray.  Now  she  had  at  last  found 
tears,  and  she  wept  noiselessly  but  unceasingly. 

The  boy  had  plucked  some  grapes,  and  placed  them  carefully 
in  his  basket ;  he  was  about  to  select  a  nectarine  that  seemed  riper 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  43 

than  the  rest,  when  his  hand  was  roughly  seized ;  and  the  gruff 
voice  of  John  Green,  the  gardener,  exclaimed  : 

"  What  are  you  about,  Master  Philip?  you  must  not  touch  them 
'ere  fruit  !  " 

"How  dare  you,  fellow!"  cried  the  young  gentleman,  in  a 
tone  of  equal  astonishment  and  wrath. 

"  None  of  your  airs,  Master  Philip!  What  I  mean  is,  that 
some  great  folks  are  coming  to  look  at  the  place  to-morrow  ;  and 
1  won't  have  my  show  of  fruit  spoiled  by  being  pawed  about  by 
the  like  of  you  :  so,  that's  plain,  Master  Philip !  " 

The  boy  grew  very  pale,  but  remained  silent.  The  gardener, 
delighted  to  retaliate  the  insolence  he  had  received,  continued  : 

"  You  need  not  go  for  to  look  so  spiteful,  master  ;  you  are  not 
the  great  man  you  thought  you  were  ;  you  are  nobody  now,  and 
so  you  will  find  ere  long.  So,  march  out,  if  you  please :  I  wants 
to  lock  up  the  glass." 

As  he  spoke,  he  took  the  lad  roughly  by  the  arm ;  but  Philip, 
the  most  irascible  of  mortals,  was  strong  for  his  years,  and  fear- 
less as  a  young  lion.  He  caught  up  a  watering-pot,  which  the 
gardener  had  deposited  while  he  expostulated  with  his  late  tyrant, 
and  struck  the  man  across  the  face  with  it  so  violently  and  so 
suddenly,  that  he  fell  back  over  the  beds,  and  the  glass  crackled 
and  shivered  under  him.  Philip  did  not  wait  for  the  foe  to 
recover  his  equilibrium  ;  but,  taking  up  his  grapes,  and  possessing 
himself  quietly  of  the  disputed  nectarine,  quitted  the  spot ;  and 
the  gardener  did  not  think  it  prudent  to  pursue  him.  To  boys, 
under  ordinary  circumstances — boys  who  have  buffetted  their 
way  through  a  scolding  nursery,  a  wrangling  family,  or  a  public 
school — there  would  have  been  nothing  in  this  squabble  to  dwell 
on  the  memory  or  vibrate  on  the  nerves,  after  the  first  burst  of 
passion ;  but  to  Philip  Beaufort  it  was  an  era  in  life ;  it  was  the 
first  insult  he  had  ever  received  ;  it  was  his  initiation  into  that 
changed,  rough,  and  terrible  career,  to  which  the  spoiled  darling 
of  vanity  and  love  was  henceforth  condemned.  His  pride  and 
his  self-esteem  had  incurred  a  fearful  shock.  He  entered  the 
house,  and  a  sickness  came  over  him  ;  his  limbs  trembled  ;  he  sat 
down  in  the  hall,  and,  placing  the  fruit  beside  him,  covered  his 
face  with  his  hands  and  wept.  Those  were  not  the  tears  of  a  boy, 
drawn  from  a  shallow  source  ;  they  were  the  burning,  agonizing, 
reluctant  tears,  that  men  shed,  wrung  from  the  heart  as  if  it  were 
its  blood.  He  had  never  been  sent  to  school,  lest  he  should  meet 
with  mortification.  He  had  had  various  tutors,  trained  to  show, 
rather  than  to  exact  respect ;  one  succeeding  another,  at  his  own 
whira  and  caprice.  His  natural  quickness,  and  a  very  strong, 


44  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

hard,  inquisitive  turn  of  mind  had  enabled  him,  however,  to 
pick  up  more  knowledge,  though  of  a  desultory  and  miscellaneous 
nature,  than  boys  of  his  age  generally  possess ;  and  his  roving, 
independent,  out-of-door  existence  had  served  to  ripen  his  under- 
standing. He  had  certainly,  in  spite  of  every  precaution,  arrived 
at  some,  though  not  very  distinct,  notion  of  his  peculiar  position ; 
but  none  of  its  inconveniences  had  visited  him  till  that  day.  He 
began  now  to  turn  his  eyes  to  the  future;  and  vague  and  dark 
forebodings — a  consciousness  of  the  shelter,  the  protector,  the 
station,  he  had  lost  in  his  father's  death — crept  coldly  over  him. 
While  thus  musing,  a  ring  was  heard  at  the  bell ;  he  lifted  his 
head  ;  it  was  the  postman  with  a  letter.  Philip  hastily  rose,  and, 
averting  his  face,  on  which  the  tears  were  not  dried,  took  the  let- 
ter ;  and  then,  snatching  up  his  little  basket  of  fruit,  repaired  to 
his  mother's  room. 

The  shutters  were  half  closed  on  the  bright  day;  oh,  what  a 
mockery  is  there  in  the  smile  of  the  happy  sun  when  it  shines  on 
the  wretched  !  Mrs.  Morton  sat,  or  rather  crouched,  in  a  distant 
corner,  her  streaming  eyes  fixed  on  vacancy ;  listless,  drooping,  a 
very  image  of  desolate  woe ;  and  Sidney  was  weaving  flower- 
chains  at  her  feet. 

"  Mamma  !  mother  !  "  whispered  Philip,  as  he  threw  his  arms 
round  her  neck  ;  ' '  look  up  !  look  up  !  my  heart  breaks  to  see  you. 
Do  taste  this  fruit :  you  will  die  too,  if  you  go  on  thus ;  and  what 
will  become  of  us — of  Sidney?  " 

Mrs.  Morton  did  look  up  vaguely  into  his  face,  and  strove  to 
smile. 

"See,  too,  I  have  brought  you  a  letter;  perhaps  good  news : 
shall  I  break  the  seal  ?  ' ' 

Mrs.  Morton  shook  her  head  gently,  and  took  the  letter — alas  ! 
how  different  from  that  one  which  Sidney  had  placed  in  her 
hands  not  two  short  weeks  since ;  it  was  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort's 
handwriting.  She  shuddered,  and  laid  it  down.  And  then  there 
suddenly,  and  for  the  first  time,  flashed  across  her  the  sense  of  her 
strange  position — the  dread  of  the  future.  What  were  her  sons  to 
be  henceforth?  What  herself?  Whatever  the  sanctity  of  her  mar- 
riage, the  law  might  fail  her.  At  the  disposition  of  Mr.  Robert 
Beaufort  the  fate  of  three  lives  might  depend.  She  gasped  for 
breath ;  again  took  up  the  letter;  and  hurried  over  the  contents  ; 
they  ran  thus  : 

"  DEAR  MADAM  :  Knowing  that  you  must  naturally  be  anxious 
as  to  the  future  prospects  of  your  children  and  yourself,  left  by 
my  poor  brother  destitute  of  all  provision,  I  take  the  earliest 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  45 

opportunity  which  it  seems  to  me  that  propriety  and  decorum 
allow,  to  apprise  you  of  my  intentions.  I  need  not  say  that,  pro- 
perly speaking,  you  can  have  no  ftind  of  claim  upon  the  relations 
of  my  late  brother ;  nor  will  I  hurt  your  feelings  by  those  moral 
reflections  which  at  this  season  of  sorrow  cannot,  I  hope,  fail 
involuntarily  to  force  themselves  upon  you.  Without  more  than 
this  mere  allusion  to  your  peculiar  connection  with  my  brother,  I 
may,  however,  be  permitted  to  add,  that  that  connection  tended 
very  materially  to  separate  him  from  the  legitimate  branches  of 
his  family ;  and  in  consulting  with  them  as  to  a  provision  for  you 
and  your  children.  I  find  that,  besides  scruples  that  are  to  be  res- 
pected, some  natural  degree  of  soreness  exists  upon  their  minds. 
Out  of  regard,  however,  to  my  poor  brother  (though  I  saw  very 
little  of  him  of  late  years),  I  am  willing  to  waive  those  feelings 
which,  as  a  father  and  a  husband,  you  may  conceive  that  I  share 
with  the.  rest  of  my  family.  You  will  probably  now  decide  on 
living  with  some  of  your  own  relations  ;  and  that  you  may  not  be 
entirely  a  burden  to  them,  I  beg  to  say  that  I  shall  allow  you  a 
hundred  a  year  ;  paid,  if  you  prefer  it  quarterly.  You  may  also 
select  such  articles  of  linen  and  plate  as  you  require  for  your  own 
use.  With  regard  to  your  sons,  I  have  no  objection  to  place  them 
at  a  grammar-school,  and,  at  a  proper  age,  to  apprentice  them  to 
any  trade  suitable  to  their  future  station,  in  the  choice  of  which 
your  own  family  can  give  you  the  best  advice.  If  they  conduct 
themselves  properly,  they  may  always  depend  on  my  protection. 
I  do  not  wish  to  hurry  your  movements ;  but  it  will  probably  be 
painful  to  you  to  remain  longer  than  you  can  help  in  a  place 
crowded  with  unpleasant  recollections ;  and  as  the  cottage  is  to  be 
sold — indeed,  my  brother-in-law,  Lord  Lilburne,  thinks  it  would 
suit  him — you  will  be  liable  to  the  interruption  of  strangers  to  see 
it ;  and  your  prolonged  residence  at  Fernside,  you  must  be 
sensible,  is  rather  an  obstacle  to  the  sale.  I  beg  to  inclose  you  a 
draft  for  ^100  to  pay  any  present  expenses ;  and  to  request,  when 
you  are  settled,  to  know  where  the  first  quarter  shall  be  paid. 

"  I  shall  write  to  Mr.  Jackson  (who  I  think,  is  the  bailiff)  to 
detail  my  instructions  as  to  selling  the  crops,  etc.,  and  discharg- 
ing the  servants ;  so  that  you  may  have  no  further  trouble. 
"I  am,  Madam, 

"  Your  obedient  Servant, 

"  ROBERT  BEAUFORT. 
"Berkeley  Square,  September  i2th,  18 — ." 

The  letter  fell  from  Catherine's  hands.     Her  grief  was  changed 
to  indignation  and  scorn. 


46  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"  The  insolent !  "  she  exclaimed,  with  flashing  eyes.  "  This 
to  me  !  to  me  ! — The  wife,  the  lawful  wife  of  his  brother  !  The 
wedded  mother  of  his  brother's  children  !  " 

"Say  that  again,  mother!  again — again!  "  cried  Philip,  in  a 
loud  voice.  "His  wife  ! — wedded !  " 

"I  swear  it,"  said  Catherine,  solemnly.  "I  kept  the  secret 
for  your  father's  sake.  Now,  for  yours  the  truth  must  be  pro- 
claimed." 

"Thank  God!  thank  God!"  murmured  Philip,  in  a  quiver- 
ing voice,  throwing  his  arms  round  his  brother.  ' '  We  have  no 
brand  on  our  names,  Sidney." 

At  those  accents,  so  full  of  suppressed  joy  and  pride,  the  mother 
felt  at  once  all  that  her  son  had  suspected  and  concealed.  She 
felt  that  beneath  his  haughty  and  wayward  character  there  had 
lurked  delicate  and  generous  forbearance  for  her ;  that  from  his 
equivocal  position  his  very  faults  might  have  arisen ;  and  a  pang 
of  remorse  for  her  long  sacrifice  of  the  children  to  the  father  shot 
through  her  heart.  It  was  followed  by  a  fear,  an  appalling  fear, 
more  painful  than  the  remorse.  The  proofs  that  were  to  clear 
herself  and  them !  The  words  of  her  husband,  that  last  awful 
morning,  rang  in  her  ear.  The  minister  dead  ;  the  witness 
absent ;  the  register  lost !  But  the  copy  of  that  register  !  the 
copy  !  might  not  that  suffice  ?  She  groaned,  and  closed  her  eyes 
as  if  to  shut  out  the  future:  then  starting  up,  she  hurried  from 
the  room,  and  went  straight  to  Beaufort's  study.  As  she  laid  her 
hand  on  the  latch  of  the  door,  she  trembled  and  drew  back.  But 
care  for  the  living  was  stronger  at  that  moment  than  even  anguish 
for  the  dead :  she  entered  the  apartment ;  she  passed  with  a  firm 
step  to  the  bureau.  It  was  locked ;  Robert  Beaufort's  seal  upon 
the  lock:  on  every  cupboard,  every  box,  every  drawer,  the  same 
seal  that  spoke  of  rights  more  valued  than  her  own.  But  Catherine 
was  not  daunted  :  she  turned  and  saw  Philip  by  her  side ;  she 
pointed  to  the  bureau  in  silence  ;  the  boy  understood  the  appeal. 
He  left  the  room,  and  returned  in  a  few  moments  with  a  chisel. 
The  lock  was  broken  :  tremblingly  and  eagerly  Catherine  ran- 
sacked the  contents ;  opened  paper  after  paper,  letter  after  letter, 
in  vain  :  no  certificate,  no  will,  no  memorial.  Could  the  brother 
have  abstracted  the  fatal  proof?  A  word  sufficed  to  explain  to 
Philip  what  she  sought  for ;  and  his  search  was  more  minute  than 
hers.  Every  possible  receptacle  for  papers  in  that  room,  in  the 
whole  house,  was  explored,  and  still  the  search  was  fruitless. 

Three  hours  afterwards  they  were  in  the  same  room  in  which 
Philip  had  brought  Robert  Beaufort's  letter  to  his  mother. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  47 

Catherine  was  seated,  tearless,  but  deadly  pale  with  heart-sickness 
and  dismay. 

"  Mother,"  said  Philip,  "  may  I  now  read  the  letter?  " 

"  Yes,  boy ;  and  decide  for  us  all."  She  paused,  and  examined 
his  face  as  he  read.  He  felt  her  eye  was  upon  him,  and  restrained 
his  emotions  as  he  proceeded.  When  he  had  done,  he  lifted  his 
dark  gaze  upon  Catherine's  watchful  countenance. 

"Mother,  whether  or  not  we  obtain  our  rights,  you  will  still 
refuse  this  man's  charity?  I  am  young — a  boy  ;  but  I  am  strong 
and  active.  I  will  work  for  you  day  and  night.  I  have  it  in  me 
— I  feel  it;  anything  rather  than  eating  his  bread." 

' '  Philip !  Philip  !  you  are  indeed  my  son ;  your  father's  son  ! 
And  have  you  no  reproach  for  your  mother,  who  so  weakly,  so 
criminally,  concealed  your  birthright,  till,  alas !  discovery  may 
be  too  late?  Oh  !  reproach  me,  reproach  me  !  It  will  be  kind- 
ness. No  !  do  not  kiss  me !  I  cannot  bear  it.  Boy  !  boy  !  if, 
as  my  heart  tells  me,  we  fail  in  proof,  do  you  understand  what,  in 
the  world's  eye,  I  am;  what  you  are  ?  " 

"I  do  !  "  said  Philip,  firmly;  and  he  fell  on  his  knees  at  her 
feet.  ' '  Whatever  others  call  you,  you  are  a  mother,  and  I  your 
son.  You  are,  in  the  judgment  of  Heaven,  my  father's  Wife,  and 
I  his  Heir." 

Catherine  bowed  her  head,  and,  with  a  gush  of  tears,  fell  into 
his  arms.  Sidney  crept  up  to  her,  and  forced  his  lips  to  her  cold 
cheek.  "  Mamma  !  what  vexes  you?  Mamma,  mamma  !  " 

"  Oh,  Sidney  !  Sidney  !  How  like  his  father  !  Look  at  him, 
Philip  !  Shall  we  do  right  to  refuse  him  even  this  pittance? 
Must  he  be  a  beggar  too  ?  " 

"Never  a  beggar,"  said  Philip,  with  a  pride  that  showed  what 
hard  lessons  he  had  yet  to  learn.  "  The  lawful  sons  of  a  Beau- 
fort were  not  born  to  beg  their  bread  !  " 


CHAPTER  VI. 

"  The  storm  above,  and  frozen  world  below. 
****** 

The  olive  bough 

Faded  and  cast  upon  the  common  wind, 
And  earth  a  doveless  ark." — LYMAN  BLANCHARD. 

MR.  ROBERT  BEAUFORT  was  generally  considered  by  the  world 
a  very  worthy  man.  He  had  never  committed  any  excess — never 
gambled  nor  incurred  debt,  nor  fallen  into  the  warm  errors  most 
common  with  his  sex.  He  was  a  good  husband,  a  careful  father, 


48  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

an  agreeable  neighbor — rather  charitable  than  otherwise,  to  the 
poor.  He  was  honest  and  methodical  in  his  dealings,  and  had 
been  known  to  behave  handsomely  in  different  relations  of  life. 
Mr.  Robert  Beaufort,  indeed,  always  meant  to  do  what  was  right — 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world !  He  had  no  other  rule  of  action  but 
that  which  the  world  supplied:  his  religion  was  decorum — his 
sense  of  honor  was  regard  to  opinion.  His  heart  was  a  dial  to 
which  the  world  was  the  sun :  when  the  great  eye  of  the  public 
fell  on  it,  it  answered  every  purpose  that  a  heart  could  answer ; 
but  when  that  eye  was  invisible,  the  dial  was  mute — a  piece  of 
brass  and  nothing  more. 

It  is  just  to  Robert  Beaufort  to  assure  the  reader  that  he  wholly 
disbelieved  his  brother's  story  of  a  private  marriage.  He  con- 
sidered that  tale,  when  heard  for  the  first  time,  as  the  mere  inven- 
tion (and  a  shallow  one)  of  a  man  wishing  to  make  the  impru- 
dent step  he  was  about  to  take  as  respectable  as  he  could.  The 
careless  tone  of  his  brother  when  speaking  upon  the  subject ;  his 
confession  that  of  such  a  marriage  there  were  no  distinct  proofs, 
except  a  copy  of  a  register  (which  copy  Robert  had  not  found ;) 
made  his  incredulity  natural.  He  therefore  deemed  himself 
under  no  obligation  of  delicacy,  or  respect,  to  a  woman  through 
whose  means  he  had  very  nearly  lost  a  noble  succession  ;  a  woman 
who  had  not  even  borne  his  brother's  name ;  a  woman  whom 
nobody  knew.  Had  Mrs.  Morton  been  Mrs.  Beaufort,  and  the 
natural  sons  legitimate  children,  Robert  Beaufort,  supposing  their 
situation  of  relative  power  and  dependence  to  have  been  the  same, 
would  have  behaved  with  careful  and  scrupulous  generosity.  The 
world  would  have  said,  "Nothing  can  be  handsomer  than  Mr. 
Robert  Beaufort's  conduct!"  Nay,  if  Mrs.  Morton  had  been 
some  divorced  wife  of  birth  and  connections,  he  would  have  made 
very  different  dispositions  in  her  favor:  he  would  not  have 
allowed  the  connections  to  call  him  shabby.  But  here  he  felt  that, 
all  circumstances  considered,  the  world,  if  it  spoke  at  all  (which 
it  would  scarcely  think  it  worth  while  to  do),  would  be  on  his 
side.  An  artful  woman — low-born,  and,  of  course,  low-bred — 
who  wanted  to  inveigle  her  rich  and  careless  paramour  into  mar- 
riage ;  what  could  be  expected  from  the  man  she  had  sought  to 
injure — the  rightful  heir?  Was  it  not  very  good  in  him  to  do 
anything  for  her,  and,  if  he  provided  for  the  children  suitably  to 
the  original  station  of  the  mother,  did  he  not  go  to  the  very 
utmost  of  reasonable  expectation?  He  certainly  thought  in  his 
conscience,  such  as  it  was,  that  he  had  acted  well — not  extrava- 
gantly, not  foolishly ;  but  well.  He  was  sure  the  world  would 
say  so  if  it  knew  all:  he  was  not  bound  to  do  anything.  He  was 


MIGHT  AND  MORNING.  49 

not,  therefore,  prepared  for  Catherine's  short,  haughty,  but  tem- 
perate reply  to  his  letter ;  a  reply  which  conveyed  a  decided 
refusal  of  his  offers — asserted  positively  her  own  marriage,  and 
the  claims  of  her  children — intimated  legal  proceedings — and 
was  signed  in  the  name  of  Catherine  Beaufort.  Mr.  Beaufort 
put  the  letter  in  his  bureau,  labelled,  "Impertinent  answer  from 
Mrs.  Morton,  Sept.  14,"  and  was  quite  contented  to  forget  the 
existence  of  the  writer,  until  his  lawyer,  Mr.  Blackwell,  informed 
him  that  a  suit  had  been  instituted  by  Catherine.  Mr.  Robert 
turned  pale  but  Blackwell  composed  him. 

' '  Pooh,  sir !  you  have  nothing  to  fear.  It  is  but  an  attempt  to 
extort  money :  the  attorney  is  a  low  practitioner,  accustomed  to 
get  up  bad  cases:  they  can  make  nothing  of  it." 

This  was  true  :  whatever  the  rights  of  the  case,  poor  Catherine 
had  no  proofs — no  evidence — which  could  justify  a  respectable 
lawyer  to  advise  her  proceeding  to  a  suit.  She  named  two  wit- 
nesses of  her  marriage — one  dead,  the  other  could  not  be  heard 
of.  She  selected  for  the  alleged  place  in  which  the  ceremony 
was  performed  a  very  remote  village,  in  which  it  appeared  that 
the  register  had  been  destroyed.  No  attested  copy  thereof  was  to 
be  found,  and  Catherine  was  stunned  on  hearing  that,  even  if 
found,  it  was  doubtful  whether  it  could  be  received  as  evidence, 
unless  to  corroborate  actual  personal  testimony.  It  so  happened 
that  when  Philip,  many  years  ago,  had  received  a  copy,  he  had 
not  shown  it  to  Catherine,  nor  mentioned  Mr.  Jones's  name  as  the 
copyist.  In  fact,  then  only  three  years  married  to  Catherine,  his 
worldly  caution  had  not  yet  been  conquered  by  confident  experi- 
ence of  her  generosity.  As  for  the  mere  moral  evidence  depen- 
dent on  the  publication  of  her  bans  in  London,  that  amounted  to 

no  proof  whatever ;  nor,  on  inquiry  at  A ,  did  the  Welsh 

villagers  remember  anything  further  than  that,  some  fifteen  years 
ago,  a  handsome  gentleman  had  visited  Mr.  Price,  and  one  or  two 
rather  thought  that  Mr.  Price  had  married  him  to  a  lady  from 
London  ;  evidence  quite  inadmissible  against  the  deadly,  damn- 
ing fact,  that,  for  fifteen  years,  Catherine  had  openly  borne 
another  name,  and  lived  with  Mr.  Beaufort  ostensibly  as  his  mis- 
tress. Her  generosity  in  *his  destroyed  her  case.  Nevertheless, 
she  found  a  low  practitioner,  who  took  her  money  and  neglected 
her  cause ;  so  her  suit  was  heard  and  dismissed  with  contempt. 
Henceforth,  then,  indeed,  in  the  eyes  of  the  law  and  the  public, 
Catherine  was  an  impudent  adventurer,  and  her  sons  were  name- 
less outcasts. 

And  now,  relieved  from  all  fear,  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  entered 
upon  the  full  enjoyment  of  his  splendid  fortune.  The  house  in 


50  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

Berkeley  Square  was  furnished  anew.  Great  dinners  and  gs.y 
routs  were  given  in  the  ensuing  spring.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Beaufort 
became  persons  of  considerable  importance.  The  rich  man  hau, 
even  when  poor,  been  ambitious;  his  ambition  now  centred  in 
his  only  son.  Arthur  had  always  been  considered  a  boy  of  tal- 
ents and  promise — to  what  might  he  not  now  aspire  ?  The  term 
of  his  probation  with  the  tutor  was  abridged,  and  Arthur  Beau- 
fort was  sent  at  once  to  Oxford. 

Before  he  went  to  the  university,  during  a  short  preparatory 
visit  to  his  father,  Arthur  spoke  to  him  of  the  Mortons. 

"  What  has  become  of  them,  sir?  and  what  have  you  done  for 
them?" 

•'Done  for  them?"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  opening  his  eyes. 
' '  What  should  I  do  for  persons  who  have  just  been  harassing  me 
tvith  the  most  unprincipled  litigation  ?  My  conduct  to  them  has 
been  too  generous;  that  is,  all  things  considered.  But  when  you 
ure  my  age  you  will  find  there  is  very  little  gratitude  in  the  world, 
Arthur." 

"  Still,  sir,"  said  Arthur,  with  the  good  nature  that  belonged 
to  him :  "still,  my  uncle  was  greatly  attached  to  them  ;  and  the 
boys,  at  least,  are  guiltless." 

"  Well,  well !  "  replied  Mr.  Beaufort,  a  little  impatiently  ;  "  I 
believe  they  want  for  nothing  :  I  fancy  they  are  with  the  mother's 
relations.  Whenever  they  address  me  in  a  proper  manner,  they 
shall  not  find  me  revengeful  or  hard-hearted ;  but,  since  we  are 
on  this  topic,"  continued  the  father,  smoothing  his  shirt-frill  with 
a  care  that  showed  his  decorum  even  in  trifles,  "I  hope  you  see 
the  results  of  that  kind  of  connection,  and  that  you  will  take 
warning  by  your  poor  uncle's  example.  And  now  let  us  change 
the  subject ;  it  is  not  a  very  pleasant  one,  and,  at  your  age,  the 
less  your  thoughts  turn  on  such  matters  the  better." 

Arthur  Beaufort,  with  the  careless  generosity  of  youth  that 
gauges  other  men's  conduct  by  its  own  sentiments,  believed  that 
his  father,  who  had  never  been  niggardly  to  himself,  had  really 
acted  as  his  words  implied ;  and,  engrossed  by  the  pursuits  of  the 
new  and  brilliant  career  opened,  whether  to  his  pleasures  or  his 
studies,  suffered  the  objects  of  his  inquiries  to  pass  from  his 
thoughts. 

Meanwhile,  Mrs.  Morton,  for  by  that  name  we  must  still  call 
her,  and  her  children,  were  settled  in  a  small  lodging  in  a  humble 
suburb;  situated  on  the  high  road  between  Fernside  and  the 
metropolis.  She  saved  from  her  hopeless  law-suit,  after  the  sale 
of  her  jewels  and  ornaments,  a  sufficient  sum  to  enable  her,  with 
economy,  to  live  respectably  for  a  year  or  two  at  least,  during 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  5! 

which  time  she  might  arrange  her  plans  for  the  future.  She  reck- 
oned, as  a  sure  resource,  upon  the  assistance  of  her  relations; 
but  it  was  one  to  which  she  applied  with  natural  shame  and 
reluctance.  She  had  kept  up  a  correspondence  with  her  father 
during  his  life.  To  him,  she  never  revealed  the  secret  of  her 
marriage,  though  she  did  not  write  like  a  person  conscious  of 
error.  Perhaps,  as  she  always  said  to  her  son,  she  had  made  to 
her  husband  a  solemn  promise  never  to  divulge  or  even  hint  that 
secret  until  he  himself  should  authorize  its  disclosure.  For 
neither  he  nor  Catherine  ever  contemplated  separation  or  death. 
Alas !  how  all  of  us,  when  happy,  sleep  secure  in  the  dark 
shadows,  which  ought  to  warn  us  of  the  sorrows  that  are  to  come ! 
Still  Catherine's  father,  a  man  of  coarse  mind  and  not  rigid  prin- 
ciples, did  not  take  much  to  heart  that  connection  which  he 
assumed  to  be  illicit.  She  was  provided  for,  that  was  some  com- 
fort :  doubtless  Mr.  Beaufort  would  act  like  a  gentleman,  perhaps 
at  last  make  her  an  honest  woman  and  a  lady.  Meanwhile,  she 
had  a  fine  house,  and  a  fine  carriage,  and  fine  servants;  and  so 
far  from  applying  to  him  for  money,  was  constantly  sending  him 
little  presents.  But  Catherine  only  saw,  in  his  permission  of  her 
correspondence,  kind,  forgiving,  and  trustful  affection,  and  she 
loved  him  tenderly :  when  he  died,  the  link  that  bound  her  to 
her  family  was  broken.  Her  brother  succeeded  to  the  trade ;  a 
man  of  probity  and  honor,  but  somewhat  hard  and  unamiable. 
In  the  only  letter  she  had  received  from  him — the  one  announc- 
ing her  father's  death — he  told  her  plainly,  and  very  properly, 
that  he  could  not  countenance  the  life  she  led  :  that  he  had  chil- 
dren growing  up ;  that  all  intercourse  between  them  was  at  an 
end,  unless  she  left  Mr.  Beaufort;  when,  if  she  sincerely  repented, 
he  would  still  prove  her  affectionate  brother. 

Though  Catherine  had  at  the  time  resented  this  letter  as  unfeel- 
ing— now,  humbled  and  sorrow-stricken,  she  recognized  the  pro- 
priety of  principle  from  which  it  emanated.  Her  brother  was 
well  off  for  his  station;  she  would  explain  to  him  her  real  situa- 
tion ;  he  would  believe  her  story.  She  would  write  to  him,  and 
beg  him,  at  least,  to  give  aid  to  her  poor  children. 

But  this  step  she  did  not  take  till  a  considerable  portion  of  her 
pittance  was  consumed ;  till  nearly  three  parts  of  a  year  since 
Beaufort's  death  had  expired  ;  and  till  sundry  warnings,  not  to  be 
lightly  heeded,  had  made  her  forebode  the  probability  of  an 
early  death  for  herself.  From  the  age  of  sixteen,  when  she  had 
been  placed  by  Mr.  Beaufort  at  the  head  of  his  household,  she 
had  been  cradled,  not  in  extravagance,  but  in  an  easy  luxury, 
which  had  not  brought  with  it  habits  of  economy  and  thrift. 


tji  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

She  could  grudge  anything  to  herself,  but  to  her  children — his 
children,  whose  every  whim  had  been  anticipated,  she  had  not 
the  heart  to  be  saving.  She  could  have  starved  in  a  garret  had 
she  been  alone ;  but  she  could  not  see  them  wanting  a  comfort 
while  she  possessed  a  guinea.  Philip,  to  do  him  justice,  evinced 
a  consideration  not  to  have  been  expected  from  his  early  and 
arrogant  recklessness.  But  Sidney,  who  could  expect  considera- 
tion from  such  a  child  ?  What  could  he  know  of  the  change  of 
circumstances — of  the  value  of  money?  Did  he  seem  dejected, 
Catherine  would  steal  out  and  spend  a  week's  income  on  the  lap- 
ful  of  toys  which  she  brought  home.  Did  he  seem  a  shade  more 
pale — did  he  complain  of  the  slightest  ailment,  a  doctor  must  be 
sent  for.  Alas  !  her  own  ailments,  neglected  and  unheeded,  were 
growing  beyond  the  reach  of  medicine.  Anxious,  fearful,  gnawed 
by  regret  for  the  past — the  thought  of  famine  in  the  future — she 
daily  fretted  and  wore  herself  away.  She  had  cultivated  her 
mind  during  her  secluded  residence  with  Mr.  Beaufort,  but  she 
had  learned  none  of  the  arts  by  which  decayed  gentlewomen  keep 
the  wolf  from  the  door ;  no  little  holiday  accomplishments, 
which,  in  the  day  of  need,  turn  to  useful  trade ;  no  water-color 
drawings,  no  paintings  on  velvet,  no  fabrication  of  pretty  gew- 
gaws, no  embroidery  and  fine  needle-work.  She  was  helpless — 
utterly  helpless ;  if  she  had  resigned  herself  to  the  thought  of 
service,  she  would  not  have  had  the  physical  strength  for  a  place 
of  drudgery,  and  where  could  she  have  found  the  testimonials 
necessary  for  a  place  of  trust?  A  great  change,  at  this  time,  was 
apparent  in  Philip.  Had  he  fallen,  then,  into  kind  hands,  and 
under  guiding  eyes,  his  passions  and  energies  might  have  ripened 
into  rare  qualities  and  great  virtues.  But  perhaps,  as  Goethe  has 
somewhere  said,  "Experience,  after  all,  is  the  best  Teacher."  He 
kept  a  constant  guard  on  his  vehement  temper,  his  wayward  will ; 
he  would  not  have  vexed  his  mother  for  the  world.  But,  strange 
to  say  (it  was  a  great  mystery  in  the  woman's  heart),  in  propor- 
tion as  he  became  more  amiable,  it  seemed  that  his  mother  loved 
him  less.  Perhaps  she  did  not,  in  that  change,  recognize  so 
closely  the  darling  of  the  old  time ;  perhaps  the  very  weaknesses 
and  importunities  of  Sidney,  the  hourly  sacrifices  the  child 
entailed  upon  her,  endeared  the  younger  son  more  to  her  from 
that  natural  sense  of  dependence  and  protection  which  forms  the 
great  bond  between  mother  and  child ;  perhaps,  too,  as  Philip 
had  been  one  to  inspire  as  much  pride  as  affection,  so  the  pride 
faded  away  with  the  expectations  that  had  fed  it,  and  carried  off 
in  its  decay  some  of  the  affection  that  was  intertwined  with  it. 
However  this  be,  Philip  had  formerly  appeared  the  more  spoiled 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  $3 

and  favored  of  the  two ;  and  now  Sidney  seemed  all  in  all. 
Thus,  beneath  the  younger  son's  caressing  gentleness,  there  grew 
up  a  certain  regard  for  self ;  it  was  latent,  it  took  amiable  colors ; 
it  had  even  a  certain  charm  and  grace  in  so  sweet  a  child,  but 
selfishness  it  was  not  the  less  :  in  this  he  differed  from  his  brother. 
Philip  was  self-willed  :  Sidney,  self-loving.  A  certain  timidity  of 
character,  endearing  perhaps  to  the  anxious  heart  of  a  mother, 
made  this  fault  in  the  younger  boy  more  likely  to  take  root.  For, 
in  bold  natures,  there  is  a  lavish  and  uncalculating  recklessness 
which  scorns  self  unconsciously :  and  though  there  is  a  fear 
which  arises  from  a  loving  heart,  and  is  but  sympathy  for  others 
— the  fear  which  belongs  to  a  timid  character  is  but  egotism — 
but,  when  physical,  the  regard  for  one's  own  person:  when  moral, 
the  anxiety  for  one's  own  interests. 

It  was  in  a  small  room  in  a  lodging-house  in  the  suburb  of  H 

that  Mrs.  Morton  was  seated  by  the  window,  nervously  awaiting 
the  knock  of  the  postman,  who  was  expected  to  bring  her  brother's 
reply  to  her  letter.  It  was,  therefore,  between  ten  and  eleven 
o'clock — a  morning  in  the  merry  month  of  June.  It  was  hot  and 
sultry,  which  is  rare  in  an  English  June.  A  flytrap,  red,  white, 
and  yellow,  suspended  from  the  ceiling,  swarmed  with  flies ;  flies 
were  on  the  ceiling,  flies  buzzed  at  the  windows ;  the  sofa  and 
chairs  of  horsehair  seemed  stuffed  with  flies.  There  was  an  air 
of  heated  discomfort  in  the  thick,  solid  moreen  curtains,  in  the 
gaudy  paper,  in  the  bright-staring  carpet,  in  the  very  looking-glass 
over  the  chimney-piece,  where  a  strip  of  mirror  lay  imprisoned  in 
an  embrace  of  frame  covered  with  yellow  muslin.  We  may  talk 
of  the  dreariness  of  winter ;  and  winter,  no  doubt,  is  desolate : 
but  what  in  the  world  is  more  dreary  to  eyes  inured  to  the  verdure 
and  bloom  of  Nature — 

"  The  pomp  of  groves  and  garniture  of  fields," 

than  a  close  room  in  a  suburban  lodging-house ;  the  sun  piercing 
every  corner ;  nothing  fresh,  nothing  cool,  nothing  fragrant  to  be 
seen,  felt,  or  inhaled ;  all  dust,  glare,  noise,  with  a  chandler's 
shop,  perhaps,  next  door  ?  Sidney,  armed  with  a  pair  of  scissors, 
was  cutting  the  pictures  out  of  a  story-book,  which  his  mother  had 
bought  him  the  day  before.  Philip,  who,  of  late,  had  taken  much 
to  rambling  about  the  streets — it  may  be,  in  hopes  of  meeting  one 
of  those  benevolent,  eccentric,  elderly  gentlemen,  he  had  read  of 
in  old  novels,  who  suddenly  come  to  the  relief  of  distressed  virtue; 
or,  more  probably,  from  the  restlessness  that  belonged  to  his  ad- 
venturous temperament, — Philip  had  left  the  house  since  breakfast. 
"  Oh,  how  hot  this  nasty  room  is  !  "  exclaimed  Sidney  abruptly, 


$4  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

looking  up  from  his  employment.  "Shan't  we  ever  go  into  the 
country  again,  mamma?" 

"Not  at  present,  my  love." 

"I  wish  I  could  have  my  pony;  why  can't  I  have  my  pony, 
mamma?" 

"  Because — because — the  pony  is  sold,  Sidney." 

"Who  sold  it?" 

"Your  uncle." 

"He  is  a  very  naughty  man,  my  uncle:  is  not  he?  But  can't 
I  have  another  pony  ?  It  would  be  so  nice,  this  fine  weather !  " 

"  Ah  !  my  dear,  I  wish  I  could  afford  it :  but  you  shall  have  a 
ride  this  week !  Yes,"  continued  the  mother,  as  if  reasoning  with 
herself,  in  excuse  of  the  extravagance,  "he  does  not  look  well: 
poor  child  !  he  must  have  exercise." 

"  A  ride  !  oh  !  that  is  my  own  kind  mamma  !  "  exclaimed  Sid- 
ney, clapping  his  hands.  ' '  Not  on  a  donkey,  you  know !  a  pony. 
The  man  down  the  street,  there,  lets  ponies.  I  must  have  the 
white  pony  with  the  long  tail.  But,  I  say,  mamma,  don't  tell 
Philip,  pray  don't ;  he  would  be  jealous." 

"  No,  not  jealous,  my  dear ;  why  do  you  think  so?" 

"  Because  he  is  always  angry  when  I  ask  you  for  anything.  It 
is  very  unkind  in  him,  for  I  don't  care  if  he  has  a  pony,  too, — 
only  not  the  white  one." 

Here  the  postman's  knock,  loud  and  sudden,  startled  Mrs.  Mor- 
ton from  her  seat.  She  pressed  her  hands  tightly  to  her  heart,  as 
if  to  still  its  beating,  and  went  tremulously  to  the  door ;  thence 
to  the  stairs,  to  anticipate  the  lumbering  step  of  the  slipshod  maid- 
servant. 

"Give  it  me,  Jane ;  give  it  me  !  " 

"One  shilling  and  eightpence — charged  double — if  you  please, 
ma'am!  Thank  you." 

"Mamma,  may  I  tell  Jane  to  engage  the  pony  !  " 

"Not  now,  my  love;  sit  down;  be  quiet:  I — I  am  not  well." 

Sidney,  who  was  affectionate  and  obedient,  crept  back  peace- 
ably to  the  window,  and,  after  a  short,  impatient  sigh,  resumed 
the  scissors  and  the  story-book.  I  do  not  apologize  to  the  reader 
for  the  various  letters  I  am  obliged  to  lay  before  him :  for  charac- 
ter often  betrays  itself  more  in  letters  than  in  speech.  Mr.  Roger 
Morton's  reply  was  couched  in  these  terms : 

"DEAR  CATHERINE:  I  have  received  your  letter  of  the  i4th 
inst.,  and  write  per  return.  I  am  very  much  grieved  to  hear  of 
your  afflictions ;  but  whatever  you  say,  I  cannot  think  the  late 
Mr.  Beaufort  acted  like  a  conscientious  man,  in  forgetting  to  make 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  55 

his  will  and  leaving  his  little  ones  destitute.  It  is  all  very  well  to 
talk  of  his  intentions ;  but  the  proof  of  the  pudding  is  in  the  eat- 
ing. And  it  is  hard  upon  me,  who  have  a  large  family  of  my 
own,  and  get  my  livelihood  by  honest  industry,  to  have  a  rich 
gentleman's  children  to  maintain.  As  for  your  story  about  the 
private  marriage,  it  may  or  not  be.  Perhaps  you  were  taken  in 
by  that  worthless  man,  for  a  real  marriage  it  could  not  be.  And, 
as  you  say,  the  law  has  decided  that  point ;  therefore,  the  less  you 
say  on  the  matter  the  better.  It  all  comes  to  the  same  thing. 
People  are  not  bound  to  believe  what  can't  be  proved.  And  even 
if  what  you  say  is  true,  you  are  more  to  be  blamed  than  pitied  for 
holding  your  tongue  so  many  years,  and  discrediting  an  honest 
family  as  ours  has  always  been  considered.  I  am  sure  my  wife 
would  not  have  thought  of  such  a  thing  for  the  finest  gentleman 
that  ever  wore  shoe-leather.  However,  I  don't  want  to  hurt  your 
feelings;  and  I  am  sure  I  am  ready  to  do  whatever  is  right  and 
proper.  You  cannot  expect  that  I  should  ask  you  to  my  house. 
My  wife,  you  know,  is  a  very  religious  woman — what  is  called 
evangelical ;  but  that's  neither  here  nor  there :  I  deal  with  all 
people,  churchmen  and  dissenters — even  Jews, — and  don't  trouble 
my  head  much  about  differences  in  opinion.  I  dare  say  there  are 
many  ways  to  heaven  ;  as  I  said,  the  other  day,  to  Mr.  Thwaites, 
our  member.  But  it  is  right  to  say  my  wife  will  not  hear  of 
your  coming  here ;  and,  indeed,  it  might  do  harm  to  my  business, 
for  there  are  several  elderly  singlewomen,  who  buy  flannel  for  the 
poor  at  my  shop,  and  they  are  very  particular ;  as  they  ought  to 
be,  indeed  :  for  morals  are  very  strict  in  this  county,  and  partic- 
ularly in  this  town,  where  we  certainly  do  pay  very  high  church 
rates.  Not  that  I  grumble ;  for,  though  I  am  as  liberal  as  any 
man,  I  am  for  an  established  church ;  as  I  ought  to  be,  since  the 
dean  is  my  best  customer.  With  regard  to  yourself  I  inclose  you 
;£io,  and  you  will  let  me  know  when  it  is  gone,  and  I  will  see 
what  more  I  can  do.  You  say  you  are  very  poorly,  which  I  am 
sorry  to  hear ;  but  you  must  pluck  up  your  spirits,  and  take  in 
plain  work  ;  and  I  really  think  you  ought  to  apply  to  Mr.  Robert 
Beaufort.  He  bears  a  high  character ;  and,  notwithstanding  your 
lawsuit,  which  I  cannot  approve  of,  I  dare  say  he  might  allow  you 
^40  or  ^50  a  year,  if  you  apply  properly,  which  would  be  the 
right  thing  in  him.  So  much  for  you.  As  for  the  boys — poor, 
fatherless  creatures ! — it  is  very  hard  that  they  should  be  so  pun- 
ished for  no  fault  of  their  own ;  and  my  wife,  who,  though  strict, 
is  a  good-hearted  woman,  is  ready  and  willing  to  do  what  I  wish 
about  them.  You  say  the  eldest  is  near  sixteen,  *nd  well  come  on 
in  his  studies.  I  can  get  him  a  very  good  thing  in  a  light,  gen- 


56  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

teel  way.     My  wife's  brother,  Mr.   Christopher  Plaskwith,  is  a 

bookseller  and  stationer,  with  pretty  practice,  in  R .     He  is 

a  clever  man,  and  has  a  newspaper,  which  he  kindly  sends  me 
every  week ;  and,  though  it  is  not  my  county,  it  has  some  very 
sensible  views,  and  is  often  noticed  in  the  London  papers,  as '  our 
provincial  contemporary.'  Mr.  Plaskwith  owes  me  some  money, 
which  I  advanced  him  when  he  set  up  the  paper ;  and  he  has  sev- 
eral times  most  honestly  offered  to  pay  me,  in  shares  in  the  said 
paper.  But,  as  the  thing  might  break,  and  I  don't  like  concerns 
I  don't  understand,  I  have  not  taken  advantage  of  his  very  hand- 
some proposals.  Now  Plaskwith  wrote  me  word,  two  days  ago, 
that  he  wanted  a  genteel,  smart  lad,  as  assistant  and  'prentice, 
and  offered  to  take  my  eldest  boy;  but  we  can't  spare  him.  I 
write  to  Christopher  by  this  post ;  and  if  your  youth  will  run 
down  on  the  top  of  the  coach,  and  inquire  for  Mr.  Plaskwith 
— the  fare  is  trifling — I  have  no  doubt  he  will  be  engaged  at 
once.  But  you  will  say,  '  There's  the  premium  to  consider  ! ' 
No  such  thing;  Kit  will  set  off  the  premium  against  his  debt 
to  me  ;  so  you  will  have  nothing  to  pay.  'Tis  a  very  pretty  busi- 
ness; and  the  lad's  education  will  get  him  on ;  so  that's  off  your 
mind.  As  to  the  little  chap,  I'll  take  him  at  once.  You  say  he 
is  a  pretty  boy  ;  and  a  pretty  boy  is  always  a  help  in  a  linen- 
draper's  shop.  He  shall  share  and  share  with  my  own  young 
folks ;  and  Mrs.  Morton  will  take  care  of  his  washing  and  morals. 
I  conclude  (this  is  Mrs.  M.'s  suggestion)  that  he  has  had  the 
measles,  cowpock,  and  whooping-cough,  which  please  let  me  know. 
If  he  behave  well,  which,  at  his  age,  we  can  easily  break  him  into, 
he  is  settled  for  life.  So  now  you  have  got  rid  of  two  mouths  to 
feed,  and  have  nobody  to  think  of  but  yourself,  which  must  be  a 
great  comfort.  Don't  forget  to  write  to  Mr.  Beaufort ;  and  if  he 
don't  do  something  for  you,  he's  not  the  gentleman  I  take  him 
for:  but  you  are  my  own  flesh  and  blood,  and  shan't  starve;  for, 
though  I  don't  think  it  right  in  a  man  in  business  to  encourage 
what's  wrong,  yet,  when  a  person's  down  in  the  world,  I  think  an 
ounce  of  help  is  better  than  a  pound  of  preaching.  My  wife 
thinks  otherwise,  and  wants  to  send  you  some  tracts ;  but  every- 
body can't  be  as  correct  as  some  folks.  However,  as  I  said 
before,  that's  neither  here  nor  there.  Let  me  know  when  your 
boy  comes  down,  and  also  about  the  measles,  cowpock,  and 
whooping-cough  ;  also  if  all's  right  with  Mr.  Plaskwith.  So  now 
I  hope  you  will  feel  more  comfortable;  and  remain,  dear  Cath- 
erine, "Your  forgiving  and  affectionate  brother, 

"  ROGER  MORTON. 
"  High  Street,  N ,  June  13." 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  57 

"  P.  S. — Mrs.  M.  says  that  she  will  be  a  mother  to  your  little 
boy,  and  that  you  had  better  mend  up  all  his  linen  before  you 
send  him." 

As  Catherine  finished  this  epistle,  she  lifted  her  eyes  and 
beheld  Philip.  He  had  entered  noiselessly,  and  he  remained 
silent,  leaning  against  the  wall,  and  watching  the  face  of  his 
mother,  which  crimsoned  with  painful  humiliation  while  she  read. 
Philip  was  not  now  the  trim  and  dainty  stripling  first  introduced 
to  the  reader.  He  had  outgrown  his  faded  suit  of  funeral  mourn- 
ing ;  his  long  neglected  hair  hung  elf-like  and  matted  down  his 
cheeks ;  there  was  a  gloomy  look  in  his  bright  dark  eyes.  Poverty 
never  betrays  itself  more  than  in  the  features  and  form  of  Pride. 
It  was  evident  that  his  spirit  endured,  rather  than  accommodated 
itself  to,  his  fallen  state ;  and,  notwithstanding  his  soiled  and 
threadbare  garments,  and  a  haggardness  that  ill  becomes  the 
years  of  palmy  youth,  there  was  about  his  whole  mien  and  per- 
son a  wild  and  savage  grandeur  more  impressive  than  his  former 
ruffling  arrogance  of  manner. 

"  Well,  mother,"  said  he,  with  a  strange  mixture  of  sternness 
in  his  countenance,  and  pity  in  his  voice ;  ' '  well,  mother,  and 
what  says  your  brother?  " 

"You  decided  for  us  once  before,  decide  again.  But  I  need 
not  ask  you ;  you  would  never — ' ' 

"I  don't  know,"  interrupted  Philip,  vaguely;  "let  me  see 
what  we  are  to  decide  on." 

Mrs.  Morton  was  naturally  a  woman  of  high  courage  and  spirit, 
but  sickness  and  grief  had  worn  down  both ;  and  though  Philip 
was  but  sixteen,  there  is  something  in  the  very  nature  of  woman, 
especially  in  trouble,  which  makes  her  seek  to  lean  on  some  other 
will  than  her  own.  She  gave  Philip  the  letter,  and  went  quietly 
to  sit  down  by  Sidney. 

"Your  brother  means  well,"  said  Philip,  when  he  had  con- 
cluded the  epistle. 

"Yes,  but  nothing  is  to  be  done;  I  cannot,  cannot  send  poor 
Sidney  to — to — "  and  Mrs.  Morton  sobbed. 

"No,  my  dear,  dear  mother,  no;  it  would  be  terrible,  indeed, 
to  part  you  and  him.  But  this  bookseller — Plaskwith — perhaps  I 
shall  be  able  to  support  you  both." 

"  Why,  you  do  not  think,  Philip,  of  being  an  apprentice  !  You, 
who  have  been  so  brought  up — you,  who  are  so  proud  ! " 

"  Mother,  I  would  sweep  the  crossings  for  your  sake  !  Mother, 
for  your  sake  I  would  go  to  my  uncle  Beaufort  with  my  hat  in  my 
hand,  for  half-pence.  Mother,  I  am  not  proud ;  I  would  be  hon- 


58  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

est,  if  I  can ;  but  when  I  see  you  pining  away,  and  so  changed, 
the  devil  comes  into  me,  and  I  often  shudder  lest  I  should  com- 
mit some  crime — what,  I  don't  know  !  " 

"Come  here  Philip — my  own  Philip — my  son,  my  hope,  my 
firstborn  !  "  and  the  mother's  heart  gushed  forth  in  all  the  fond- 
ness of  early  days.  "  Don't  speak  so  terribly,  you  frighten  me  !  " 

She  threw  her  arms  round  his  neck,  and  kissed  him  soothingly. 
He  laid  his  burning  temples  on  her  bosom,  and  nestled  himself  to 
her,  as  he  had  been  wont  to  do,  after  some  stormy  paroxysm  of 
his  passionate  and  wayward  infancy.  So  there  they  remained — 
their  lips  silent,  their  hearts  speaking  to  each  other — each  from 
each  taking  strange  succor  and  holy  strength  till  Philip  rose,  calm, 
and  with  a  quiet  smile.  ' '  Good-by,  mother  ;  I  will  go  at  once  to 
Mr.  Plaskwith." 

"But  you  have  no  money  for  the  coach-fare;  here,  Philip," 
and  she  placed  her  purse  in  his  hand,  from  which  he  reluctantly 
selected  a  few  shillings.  "And  mind,  if  the  man  is  rude,  and 
you  dislike  him — mind,  you  must  not  subject  yourself  to  insol- 
ence and  mortification." 

"  Oh,  all  will  go  well,  don't  fear,"  said  Philip,  cheerfully,  and 
he  left  the  house. 

Towards  evening  he  had  reached  his  destination.  The  shop 
was  of  goodly  exterior,  with  a  private  entrance ;  over  the  shop 
was  written,  "Christopher  Plaskwith,  Bookseller  and  Sta- 
tioner "  :  on  the  private  door  a  brass  plate,  inscribed  with  ' '  R 

and Mercury  Office,  Mr.  Plaskwith."  Philip  applied  at  the 

private  entrance,  and  was  shown  by  a  "neat-handed  Phillis" 
into  a  small  office-room.  In  a  few  minutes  the  door  opened,  and 
the  bookseller  entered. 

Mr.  Christopher  Plaskwith  was  a  short,  stout  man,  in  drab- 
colored  breeches,  and  gaiters  to  match  ;  a  black  coat  and  waist- 
coat ;  he  wore  a  large  watch-chain,  with  a  prodigious  bunch  of 
seals,  alternated  by  small  keys  and  old-fashioned  mourning-rings. 
His  complexion  was  pale  and  sodden,  and  his  hair  short,  dark, 
and  sleek.  The  bookseller  valued  himself  on  a  likeness  to  Bona- 
parte ;  and  affected  a  short,  brusque,  peremptory  manner,  which 
he  meant  to  be  the  indication  of  the  vigorous  and  decisive  char- 
acter of  his  prototype. 

' '  So  you  are  the  young  gentleman  Mr.  Roger  Morton  recom- 
mends?" Here  Mr.  Plaskwith  took  out  a  huge  pocket-book, 
slowly  unclasped  it,  staring  hard  at  Philip,  with  what  he  designed 
for  a  piercing  and  penetrative  survey. 

"This  is  the  letter — no  !  This  is  Sir  Thomas  Champerdown's 
order  for  fifty  copies  of  the  last  Mercury,  containing  his  speech 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  59 

at  the  county  meeting.  Your  age,  young  man? — only  sixteen  ! 
look  older;  that's  not  it — that's  not  it — and  this  is  it!  sit  down. 
Yes,  Mr.  Roger  Morton  recommends  you — a  relation — unfortunate 
circumstances — well-educated — hum!  Well,  young  man,  what 
have  you  to  say  for  yourself?  " 

"Sir?" 

"  Can  you  cast  accounts? — know  book-keeping?  " 

"  I  know  something  of  algebra,  sir." 

"  Algebra ! — oh,  what  else  ?  " 

"  French  and  Latin." 

"  Hum  !  may  be  useful.  Why  do  you  wear  your  hair  so  long? 
Look  at  mine.  What's  your  name? " 

"Philip  Morton." 

"  Mr.  Philip  Morton,  you  have  an  intelligent  countenance — I 
go  a  great  deal  by  countenances.  You  know  the  terms  ? — most 
favorable  to  you.  No  premium — I  settle  that  with  Roger.  I 
give  board  and  bed — find  your  own  washing.  Habits  regular — 
'prenticeship  only  five  years;  when  over,  must  not  set  up  in  the 
same  town.  I  will  see  to  the  indentures.  When  can  you  come?  " 

"  When  you  please,  sir." 

"  Day  after  to-morrow,  by  six  o'clock  coach." 

"  But,  sir,"  said  Philip,  "  will  there  be  no  salary?  Something, 
ever  so  small,  that  I  could  send  to  my  mother?" 

' '  Salary,  at  sixteen  ? — board  and  bed — no  premium  !  Salary, 
what  for?  'Prentices  have  no  salary!  You  will  have  every 
comfort." 

"Give  me  less  comfort,  that  I  may  give  my  mother  more;  a 
little  money,  ever  so  little,  and  take  it  out  of  my  board  :  I  can  do 
with  one  meal  a-day,  sir." 

The  bookseller  was  moved  :  he  took  a  huge  pinchful  of  snuff 
out  of  his  waistcoat  pocket,  and  mused  a  moment.  He  then  said, 
as  he  re-examined  Philip : 

"  Well,  young  man,  I'll  tell  you  what  we  will  do.  You  shall 
come  here  first  upon  trial ;  see  if  we  like  each  other  before  we 
sign  the  indentures;  allow  you,  meanwhile,  five  shillings  a-week. 
If  you  show  talent,  will  see  if  I  and  Roger  can  settle  about  some 
little  allowance.  That  do,  eh  ?  " 

"  I  thank  you,  sir,  yes,"  said  Philip  gratefully. 

"  Agreed,  then.     Follow  me — present  you  to  Mrs.  P." 

Thus  saying,  Mr.  Plaskwith  returned  the  letter  to  the  pocket- 
book,  and  the  pocket-book  to  the  pocket ;  and,  putting  his  arms 
behind  his  coat-tails,  threw  up  his  chin,  and  strode  through  the 
passage  into  a  small  parlor,  that  looked  upon  a  small  garden. 
Here,  seated  round  the  table,  were  a  thin  lady  with  a  squint 


60  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

(Mrs.  Plaskwith),  two  little  girls  (the  Misses  Plaskwith),  also 
with  squints — and  pinafores ;  a  young  man  of  three  or  four-and- 
twenty,  in  nankeen  trowsers,  a  little  the  worse  for  washing,  and 
a  black  velveteen  jacket  and  waistcoat.  This  young  gentleman 
was  very  much  freckled ;  wore  his  hair,  which  was  dark  and 
wiry,  up  at  one  side,  down  at  the  other ;  had  a  short,  thick  nose ; 
full  lips ;  and,  when  close  to  him,  smelt  of  cigars.  Such  was 
Mr.  Plimrnins,  Mr.  Plaskwith's  factotum,  foreman  in  the  shop, 
assistant-editor  to  the  Mercury.  Mr.  Plaskwith  formally  went 
the  round  of  the  introduction ;  Mrs.  P.  nodded  her  head ;  the 
Misses  P.  nudged  each  other,  and  grinned ;  Mr.  Plimmins  passed 
his  hand  through  his  hair,  glanced  at  the  glass,  and  bowed  very 
politely. 

' '  Now,  Mrs.  P. ,  my  second  cup,  and  give  Mr.  Morton  his  dish 
of  tea.  Must  be  tired,  sir — hot  day.  Jemima,  ring — no,  go  to 
the  stairs,  and  call  out,  '  More  buttered  toast.'  That's  the  shorter 
way — promptitude  is  my  rule  in  life,  Mr.  Morton.  Pray — hum, 
hum — have  you  ever,  by  chance,  studied  the  biography  of  the 
great  Napoleon  Bonaparte?  " 

Mr.  Plimmins  gulped  down  his  tea,  and  kicked  Philip  under 
the  table.  Philip  looked  fiercely  at  the  foreman,  and  replied, 
sullenly,  "  No,  sir." 

"  That's  a  pity.  Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  a  very  great  man, — 
very  !  You  have  seen  his  cast  ? — there  it  is,  on  the  dumb  waiter ! 
Look  at  it !  See  a  likeness,  eh?  " 

"  Likeness,  sir?     I  never  saw  Napoleon  Bonaparte." 

"Never  saw  him!  No!  just  look  round  the  room.  Who 
does  that  bust  put  you  in  mind  of  ?  Who  does  it  resemble  ? ' ' 

Here  Mr.  Plaskwith  rose,  and  placed  himself  in  an  attitude ; 
his  hand  in  his  waistcoat,  and  his  face  pensively  inclined  towards 
the  tea-table.  ' '  Now  fancy  me  at  St.  Helena ;  this  table  is  the 
ocean.  Now  then,  who  is  that  cast  like,  Mr.  Philip  Morton  ?" 

"  I  suppose,  sir,  it  is  like  you  !  " 

"Ah,  that  it  is!  Strikes  every  one!  Does  it  not,  Mrs.  P., 
does  it  not?  And  when  you  have  known  me  longer,  you  will 
find  a  moral  similitude — a  moral,  sir  !  Straightforward — short — 
to  the  point — bold — determined  !  " 

"Bless  me,  Mr.  P.  !  "  said  Mrs.  Plaskwith,  very  querulously, 
"  do  make  haste  with  your  tea;  the  young  gentleman,  I  suppose, 
wants  to  go  home,  and  the  coach  passes  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour." 

"Have  you  seen  Kean  in  Richard  the  Third,  Mr.  Morton?" 
asked  Mr.  Plimmins. 

"  I  have  never  seen  a  play." 

"  Never  seen  a  play !     How  very  odd  !  " 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  6 1 

"Not  at  all  odd,  Mr.  Plimmins,"  said  the  stationer.  "Mr. 
Morton  has  known  troubles — so  hand  him  the  hot  toast." 

Silent  and  morose,  but  rather  disdainful  than  sad,  Philip  lis- 
tened to  the  babble  round  him,  and  observed  the  ungenial  char- 
acters with  which  he  was  to  associate.  He  cared  not  to  please 
(that,  alas  !  had  never  been  especially  his  study)  ;  it  was  enough 
for  him  if  he  could  see,  stretching  to  his  mind's  eye  beyond  the 
walls  of  that  dull  room,  the  long  vistas  into  fairer  fortune.  At 
sixteen,  what  sorrow  can  freeze  the  Hope,  or  what  prophetic  fear 
whisper  "Fool"  to  the  Ambition?  He  would  bear  back  into 
ease  and  prosperity,  if  not  into  affluence  and  station,  the  dear 
ones  left  at  home.  From  the  eminence  of  five  shillings  a  week, 
he  looked  over  the  Promised  Land. 

At  length,  Mr.  Plaskwith,  pulling  out  his  watch,  said,  "Justin 
time  to  catch  the  coach  ;  make  your  bow  and  be  off — Smart's  the 
word  !  "  Philip  rose,  took  up  his  hat,  made  a  stiff  bow  that  in- 
cluded the  whole  group,  and  vanished  with  his  host. 

Mrs.  Plaskwith  breathed  more  easily  when  he  was  gone. 

"  I  never  seed  a  more  odd,  fierce,  ill-bred-looking  young  man! 
I  declare  I  am  quite  afraid  of  him.  What  an  eye  he  has  !  " 

"  Uncommonly  dark;  what,  I  may  say,  gipsy-like,"  said  Mr. 
Plimmins. 

"  He  !  he  !  You  always  do  say  such  good  things,  Plimmins. 
Gipsy-like  !  he  !  he  !  So  he  is  !  I  wonder  if  he  can  tell  for- 
tunes?" 

"  He'll  be  long  before  he  has  a  fortune  of  his  own  to  tell.  Ha! 
ha  !  "  said  Plimmins. 

"  He  !  he  !  how  very  good  !  you  are  so  pleasant,  Plimmins." 

While  these  strictures  on  his  appearance  were  still  going  on, 
Philip  had  already  ascended  the  roof  of  the  coach ;  and,  waving 
his  hand,  with  the  condescension  of  old  times,  to  his  future  mas- 
ter, was  carried  away  by  the  "Express  "  in  a  whirlwind  of  dust. 

"A  very  warm  evening,  sir,"  said  a  passenger  seated  at  his 
right ;  puffing,  while  he  spoke,  from  a  short  German  pipe,  a  vol- 
ume of  smoke  into  Philip's  face. 

' '  Very  warm.  Be  so  good  as  to  smoke  into  the  face  of  the 
gentleman  on  the  other  side  of  you,"  returned  Philip,  petulantly. 

"  Ho,  ho  !  "  replied  the  passenger,  with  aloud,  powerful  laugh 
— the  laugh  of  a  strong  man.  "  You  don't  take  to  the  pipe  yet ; 
you  will  by  and  by,  when  you  have  known  the  cares  and  anxieties 
that  I  have  gone  through.  A  pipe  ! — it  is  a  great  soother  ! — a 
pleasant  comforter  !  Blue  devils  fly  before  its  honest  breath  !  It 
ripens  the  brain ;  it  opens  the  heart ;  and  the  man  who  smokes, 
thinks  it  a  sage  and  acts  like  a  Samaritan  !  " 


62  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Roused  from  his  reverie  by  this  quaint  and  unexpected  decla- 
mation, Philip  turned  his  quick  glance  at  his  neighbor.  He  saw 
a  man,  of  great  bulk  and  immense  physical  power — broad-should- 
ered, deep-chested,  not  corpulent,  but  taking  the  same  girth  from 
bone  and  muscle  that  a  corpulent  man  does  from  flesh.  He  wore 
a  blue  coat — frogged,  braided,  and  buttoned  to  the  throat.  A 
broad-brimmed  straw  hat,  set  on  one  side,  gave  a  jaunty  appear- 
ance to  a  countenance  which,  notwithstanding  its  jovial  complex- 
ion and  smiling  mouth,  had,  in  repose,  a  bold  and  decided  char- 
acter. It  was  a  face  well  suited  to  the  frame,  inasmuch  as  it  be- 
tokened a  mind  capable  of  wielding  and  mastering  the  brute  force 
of  body  ;  light  eyes  of  piercing  intelligence ;  rough,  but  resolute 
and  striking  features,  and  a  jaw  of  iron.  There  was  thought, 
there  was  power,  there  was  passion,  in  the  shaggy  brow,  the  deep- 
ploughed  lines,  the  dilated  nostril,  and  the  restless  play  of  the  lips. 
Philip  looked  hard  and  gravely,  and  the  man  returned  his  look. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  me,  young  gentleman  ?"  asked  the  pas- 
senger, as  he  replaced  the  pipe  in  his  mouth.  '•'  I  am  a  fine-look- 
ing man,  am  I  not  ?  " 

"  You  seem  a  strange  one." 

"Strange!  Ay,  I  puzzle  you,  as  I  have  done,  and  shall  do, 
many.  You  cannot  read  me  as  easily  as  I  can  read  you.  Come, 
shall  I  guess  at  your  character  and  circumstances  ?  You  are  a 
gentleman,  or  something  like  it,  by  birth  ;  that  the  tone  of  your 
voice  tells  me.  You  are  poor,  devilish  poor ;  that  the  hole  in  your 
coat  assures  me.  You  are  proud,  fiery,  discontented,  and  un- 
happy ;  all  that  I  see  in  your  face.  It  was  because  I  saw  those 
signs  that  I  spoke  to  you.  I  volunteer  no  acquaintance  with  the 
happy." 

"  I  dare  say  not;  for  if  you  know  all  the  unhappy  you  must 
have  a  sufficiently  large  acquaintance,"  returned  Philip. 

' '  Your  wit  is  beyond  your  years  !  What  is  your  calling,  if  the 
question  does  not  offend  you?  " 

"  I  have  none  as  yet/'  said  Philip,  with  a  slight  sigh,  and  a 
deep  blush. 

"  More's  the  pity !  "  grunted  the  smoker,  with  a  long,  emphatic, 
nasal  intonation.  "I  should  have  judged  that  you  were  a  raw 
recruit  in  the  camp. of  the  enemy." 

"Enemy  !  I  don't  understand  you." 

"  In  other  words,  a  plant  growing  out  of  a  lawyer's  desk.  I 
will  explain.  There  is  one  class  of  spiders,  industrious,  hardwork- 
ing octopedes,  who,  out  of  the  sweat  of  their  brains  (I  take  it, 
by-the-by,  that  a  spider  must  have  a  fine  craniological  develop- 
ment) make  their  own  webs  and  catch  their  own  flies.  There  is 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  63 

another  class  of  spiders  who  have  no  stuff  in  them  wherewith  to 
make  webs ;  they,  therefore,  wander  about,  looking  out  for  food 
provided  by  the  toil  of  their  neighbors.  Whenever  they  come  to 
the  web  of  a  smaller  spider,  whose  larder  seems  well  supplied,  they 
rush  upon  his  domain — pursue  him  to  his  hole — eat  him  up  if  they 
can — reject  him  if  he  is  too  tough  for  their  maws,  and  quietly 
possess  themselves  of  all  the  legs  and  wings  they  find  dangling  in 
his  meshes :  these  spiders  I  call  enemies — the  world  calls  them 
lawyers  !  " 

Philip  laughed  :   "And  who  are  the  first  class  of  spiders?  " 
' '  Honest  creatures  who  openly  confess  that  they  live  upon  flies. 
Lawyers  fall  foul  upon  them,  under  pretense  of  delivering  flies  from 
their  clutches.     They  are  wonderful  blood-suckers  these  lawyers, 
in  spite  of  all  their  hypocrisy.     Ha  !  ha  !     Ho  !  ho  !  " 

And  with  a  loud,  rough  chuckle,  more  expressive  of  malig- 
nity than  mirth,  the  man  turned  himself  round,  applied  vigorously 
to  his  pipe,  and  sank  into  a  silence  which,  as  mile  after  mile  glided 
past  the  wheels,  he  did  not  seem  disposed  to  break.  Neither  was 
Philip  inclined  to  be  communicative.  Considerations  for  his  own 
state  and  prospects  swallowed  up  the  curiosity  he  might  otherwise 
have  felt  as  to  his  singular  neighbor.  He  had  not  touched  food 
since  the  early  morning.  Anxiety  had  made  him  insensible  to  hun- 
ger, till  he  arrived  at  Mr.  Plaskwith's  ;  and  then,  feverish,  sore, 
and  sick  at  heart,  the  sight  of  the  luxuries  gracing  the  tea-table 
only  revolted  him.  He  did  not  now  feel  hunger,  but  he  was  fa- 
tigued and  faint.  For  several  nights  the  sleep  which  youth  can  so 
ill  dispense  with  had  been  broken  and  disturbed ;  and  now,  the 
rapid  motion  of  the  coach,  and  the  free  current  of  a  fresher  and 
more  exhausting  air  than  he  had  been  accustomed  to  for  many 
months,  began  to  operate  on  his  nerves  like  the  intoxication  of  a 
narcotic.  His  eyes  grew  heavy  ;  indistinct  mists,  through  which 
there  seemed  to  glare  the  various  squints  of  the  female  Plaskwiths, 
succeeded  the  gliding  road  and  the  dancing  trees.  His  head  fell 
on  his  bosom;  and  thence,  instinctively  seeking  the  strongest  sup- 
port at  hand,  inclined  towards  the  stout  smoker,  and  finally  nest- 
led itself  composedly  on  that  gentleman's  shoulder.  The  passen- 
ger, feeling  his  unwelcome  and  unsolicited  weight,  took  the  pipe, 
which  he  had  already  thrice  refilled,  from  his  lips,  and  emitted  an 
angry  and  impatient  snort ;  finding  that  this  produced  no  effect, 
and  that  the  load  grew  heavier  as  the  boy's  sleep  grew  deeper,  he 
cried,  in  a  loud  voice,  "  Holla  !  I  did  not  pay  my  fare  to  be  your 
bolster  young  man  !  "  and  shook  himself  lustily.  Philip  started, 
and  would  have  fallen  sidelong  from  the  coach,  if  his  neighbor 


64  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

had  not  griped  him  hard  with  a  hind  that  could  have  kept  a  young 
oak  from  falling. 

"  Rouse  yourself!  You  might  have  had  an  ugly  tumble." 
Philip  muttered  something  inaudible,  between  sleeping  and 
waking,  and  turned  his  dark  eyes  toward  the  man ;  in  that  glance 
there  was  so  much  unconscious,  but  sad  and  deep  reproach,  that 
the  passenger  felt  touched  and  ashamed.  Before,  however,  he 
could  say  anything  in  apology  or  conciliation,  Philip  had  again 
fallen  asleep.  But  this  time,  as  if  he  had  felt  and  resented  the 
rebuff  he  had  received,  he  inclined  his  head  away  from  his  neigh- 
bor, against  the  edge  of  a  box  on  the  roof — a  dangerous  pillow, 
from  which  any  sudden  jolt  might  transfer  him  to  the  road  below. 
"Poor  lad! — he  looks  pale!"  muttered  the  man,  and  he 
knocked  the  weed  from  his  pipe,  which  he  placed  gently  in  his 
pocket.  "Perhaps  the  smoke  was  too  much  for  him — he  seems 
ill  and  thin  !  "  and  he  took  the  boy's  long,  lean  fingers  in  his 
own.  ' '  His  cheek  is  hollow  !  What  do  I  know  but  it  may  be 
with  fasting?  Pooh  !  I  was  a  brute.  Hush,  coachee,  hush  ! 
don't  talk  so  loud,  and  be  d — d  to  you — he  will  certainly  be  off ;  " 
and  the  man  softly  and  creepingly  encircled  the  boy's  waist  with 
his  huge  arm.  "Now,  then,  to  shift  his  head  ;  so — so, — that's 
right."  Philip's  sallow  cheek  and  long  hair  were  now  tenderly 
lapped  on  the  soliloquist's  bosom.  "Poor  wretch!  he  smiles; 
perhaps  he  is  thinking  of  home,  arid  the  butterflies  he  ran  after 
when  he  was  an  urchin — they  never  come  back,  those  days ; 
never — never — never !  I  think  the  wind  veers  to  the  east ;  he 
may  catch  cold  "  ;  — and  with  that  the  man,  sliding  the  head  for 
a  moment,  and  with  the  tenderness  of  a  woman,  from  his  breast 
to  his  shoulder,  unbuttoned  his  coat  (as  he  replaced  the  weight, 
no  longer  unwelcome,  in  its  former  part),  and  drew  the  lappets 
closely  round  the  slender  frame  of  the  sleeper,  exposing  his  own 
sturdy  breast,  for  he  wore  no  waistcoat,  to  the  sharpening  air. 
Thus  cradled  on  that  stranger's  bosom,  wrapped  from  the  present, 
and  dreaming  perhaps — while  a  heart  scorched  by  fierce  and  terri- 
ble struggles  with  life  and  sin  made  his  pillow — of  a  fair  and 
unsullied  future,  slept  the  fatherless  and  friendless  boy. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

"  Constance.  My  life,  my  joy,  my  food,  my  all  the  world, 
My  widow-comfort." — King  John, 

AMIDST  the  glare  of  lamps-^-the  rattle  of  carriages the  lumber- 
ing of  cart?  and  wagons-^the,  throng,  the  clamor,  the  reeking  life 

** 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  65 

and  dissonant  roar  of  London,  Philip  woke  from  his  happy  sleep. 
He  woke,  uncertain  and  confused,  and  saw  strange  eyes  bent  on 
him  kindly  and  watchfully. 

"You  have  slept  well,  my  lad!"  said  the  passenger,  in  the 
deep  ringing  voice  which  made  itself  heard  above  all  the  noises 
round. 

"And  you  have  suffered  me  to  incommode  you  thus ?"  said 
Philip,  with  more  gratitude  in  his  voice  and  look  than,  perhaps, 
he  had  shown  to  any  one  out  of  his  own  family  since  his  birth. 

"You  have  had  but  little  kindness  shown  you,  my  poor  boy,  if 
you  think  so  much  of  this." 

"  No — all  people  were  very  kind  to  me  once.  I  did  not  value 
it  then."  Here  the  coach  rolled  heavily  down  the  dark  arch  of 
the  inn-yard. 

"Take  care  of  yourself,  my  boy !  You  look  ill "  ;  and  in  the 
dark  the  man  slipped  a  sovereign  into  Philip's  hand. 

"  I  don't  want  money.  Though  I  thank  you  heartily  all  the 
same ;  it  would  be  a  shame  at  my  age  to  be  a  beggar.  But,  can 
you  think  of  an  employment  where  I  can  make  something?  What 
they  offer  me  is  so  trifling.  I  have  a  mother  and  a  brother — a 
mere  child,  sir — at  home." 

"Employment!"  repeated  the  man;  and  as  the  coach  now 
stopped  at  the  tavern  door,  the  light  from  the  lamp  fell  full  on  his 
marked  face.  "Ay,  I  know  of  employment;  but  you  should 
apply  to  some  one  else  to  obtain  it  for  you  !  As  for  me,  it  is  not 
Ukely  that  we  shall  meet  again  !  " 

' '  I  am  sorry  for  that !  What  and  who  are  you  ?  ' '  asked  Philip, 
Kith  a  rude  and  blunt  curiosity. 

"Me!"  returned  the  passenger,  with  his  deep  laugh ;  "Oh! 
I  know  some  people  who  call  me  an  honest  fellow.  Take  the 
employment  offered  you.  no  matter  how  trifling  the  wages ;  keep 
out  of  harm's  way.  Good  night  to  you  !  " 

So  saying,  he  quickly  descended  from  the  roof,  and,  as  he  was 
directing  the  coachman  where  to  look  for  his  carpet-bag,  Philip 
saw  three  or  four  well-dressed  men  make  up  to  him,  shake  him 
heartily  by  the  hand,  and  welcome  him  with  great  seeming  cor- 
diality. 

Philip  sighed.  "He  has  friends,"  he  muttered  to  himself; 
and,  paying  his  fare,  he  turned  from  the  bustling  yard,  and  took 
his  solitary  way  home. 

A  week  after  his  visit  to  R ,  Philip  was  settled  on  his  proba- 
tion at  Mr,  Plaskwity's,  and  Mrs.  Morton's  health  was  so  decid- 
edly worse,  that  she  resolved  to  know  her  fate,  and  consult  a 
physician,  The  pracle  was  at  first  ambiguous  in  its  response, 


66  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

But  when  Mrs.  Morton  said  firmly,  "I  have  duties  to  perform; 
upon  your  candid  answer  rest  my  plans  with  respect  to  my  chil- 
dren  left,  if  I  die  suddenly,  destitute  in  the  world,"  the  doctor 

looked  hard  in  her  face,  saw  its  calm  resolution,  and  replied 
frankly : 

"Lose  no  time,  then,  in  arranging  your  plans;  life  is  uncer- 
tain with  all — with  you,  especially ;  you  may  live  some  time  yet, 
but  your  constitution  is  much  shaken ;  I  fear  there  is  water  on  the 
chest.  No,  ma'am;  no  fee.  I  will  see  you  again." 

The  physician  turned  to  Sidney,  who  played  with  his  watch- 
chain,  and  smiled  up  in  his  face. 

"And  that  child,  sir  ?  "  said  the  mother,  wistfully  forgetting  the 
dread  fiat  pronounced  against  herself,  "he  is  so  delicate !  " 

"  Not  at  all,  ma'am, — a  very  fine  little  fellow  "  ;  and  the  doctor 
patted  the  boy's  head,  and  abruptly  vanished. 

"  Ah  !  mamma,  I  wish  you  would  ride;  I  wish  you  would  take 
the  white  pony  !  " 

"Poor  boy!  poor  boy!"  muttered  the  mother:  "I  must  not 
be  selfish."  She  covered  her  face  with  her  hands,  and  began  to 
think  ! 

Could  she,  thus  doomed,  resolve  on  declining  her  brother's 
offer  ?  Did  it  not,  at  least,  secure  bread  and  shelter  to  her  child  ? 
When  she  was  dead,  might  not  a  tie,  between  the  uncle  and 
nephew,  be  snapped  asunder  ?  Would  he  be  as  kind  to  the  boy 
as  now  when  she  could  commend  him  with  her  own  lips  to  his 
care — when  she  could  place  that  precious  charge  into  his  hands  ? 
With  these  thoughts,  she  formed  one  of  those  resolutions  which 
have  all  the  strength  of  self-sacrificing  love.  She  would  put  the 
boy  from  her,  her  last  solace  and  comfort ;  she  would  die  alone, 
— alone ! 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

"  Constance.  When  I  shall  meet  him  in  the  court  of  heaven, 
I  shall  not  know  him." — King  John. 

ONE  evening,  the  shop  closed  and  the  business  done,  Mr. 
Roger  Morton  and  his  family  sat  in  that  snug  and  comfortable 
retreat  which  generally  backs  the  warerooms  of  an  English  trades- 
man. Happy  often,  and  indeed  happy,  is  that  little  sanctuary, 
near  to,  and  yet  remote  from,  the  toil  and  care  of  the  busy  mart 
from  which  its  homely  ease  and  peaceful  security  are  drawn. 
Glance  down  those  rows  of  silenced  shops  in  a  town  at  night,  and 
picture  the  glad  and  quiet  groups  gathered  within,  over  that 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  67 

nightly  and  social  meal  which  custom  has  banished  from  the  more 
indolent  tribes,  who  neither  toil  nor  spin.  Placed  between  the 
two  extremes  of  life,  the  tradesman,  who  ventures  not  beyond  his 
means,  and  sees  clear  books  and  sure  gains,  with  enough  of  occu- 
pation to  give  healthful  excitement,  enough  of  fortune  to  greet 
each  new-born  child  without  a  sigh,  might  be  envied  alike  by 
those  above  and  those  below  his  state — if  the  restless  heart  of  man 
ever  envied  Content ! 

"  And  so  the  little  boy  is  not  to  come?  "  said  Mrs.  Morton,  as 
she  crossed  her  knife  and  fork,  and  pushed  away  her  plate,  in 
token  that  she  had  done  supper. 

"I  don't  know.  Children,  go  to  bed;  there — there — that 
will  do.  Goodnight !  Catherine  does  not  say  either  yes  or  no. 
She  wants  time  to  consider." 

' '  It  was  a  very  handsome  offer  on  our  part ;  some  folks  never 
know  when  they  are  well  off." 

' '  That  is  very  true,  my  dear,  and  you  are  a  very  sensible  per- 
son. Kate  herself  might  have  been  an  honest  woman,  and, 
what  is  more,  a  very  rich  woman,  by  this  time.  She  might  have 
married  Spencer,  the  young  brewer ;  an  excellent  man,  and  well 
to  do!" 

"  Spencer  !  I  don't  remember  him." 

"  No  :  after  she  went  off,  he  retired  from  business,  and  left  the 
place.  I  don't  know  what's  become  of  him.  He  was  mightily 
taken  with  her,  to  be  sure.  She  was  uncommonly  handsome,  my 
sister  Catherine." 

"Handsome  is  as  handsome  does,  Mr.  Morton,"  said  the  wife, 
who  was  very  much  marked  with  the  small- pox.  "  We  all  have 
our  temptations  and  trials ;  this  is  a  vale  of  tears,  and  without 
grace  we  are  whited  sepulchres." 

Mr.  Morton  mixed  his  brandy  and  water,  and  moved  his  chair 
into  its  customary  corner. 

"You  saw  your  brother's  letter,"  said  he,  after  a  pause;  "he 
gives  young  Philip  a  very  good  character." 

"The  human  heart  is  very  deceitful,"  replied  Mrs.  Morton, 
who,  by  the  way,  spoke  through  her  nose.  "  Pray  Heaven  he 
may  be  what  he  seems ;  but  what's  bred  in-  the  bones  comes  out 
in  the  flesh." 

"  We  must  hope  the  best,"  said  Mr.  Morton,  mildly;  "  and — 
put  another  lump  into  the  grog,  my  dear. ' ' 

"It  is  a  mercy,  I'm  thinking,  that  we  didn't  have  the  other 
little  boy.  I  dare  say  he  has  never  even  been  taught  his  catechism : 
them  people  don't  know  what  it  is  to  be  a  mother.  And,  besides, 
|t  would  have  been  very  awkward,  Mr,  M,,  we  could  nerer  have 


68  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

said  who  he  was :  and  I've  no  doubt  Miss  Pryinall  would  have 
been  very  curious." 

"Miss  Pryinall  be — !  "  Mr.  Morton  checked  himself,  took  a 
large  draught  of  the  brandy  and  water,  and  added,  "Miss 
Pryinall  wants  to  have  a  finger  in  everybody's  pie." 

"  But  she  buys  a  deal  of  flannel,  and  does  great  good  to  the 
town  ;  it  was  she  who  found  out  that  Mrs.  Giles  was  no  better 
than  she  should  be." 

"  Poor  Mrs.  Giles  !  She  came  to  the  workhouse." 

"  Poor  Mrs.  Giles,  indeed  !  I  wonder,  Mr.  Morton,  that  you, 
a  married  man  with  a  family,  should  say,  poor  Mrs.  Giles  !  " 

' '  My  dear,  when  people  who  have  been  well  off  come  to  the 
workhouse,  they  may  be  called  poor :  but  that's  neither  here  nor 
there ;  only,  if  the  boy  does  come  to  us,  we  must  look  sharp  upon 
Miss  Pryinall." 

"I  hope  he  won't  come;  it  will  be  very  unpleasant.  And 
when  a  man  has  a  wife  and  family,  the  less  he  meddles  with  other 
folks  and  their  little  ones,  the  better.  For  as  the  Scripture  says, 
*  A  man  shall  cleave  to  his  wife  and — '  " 

Here  a  sharp  shrill  ring  at  the  bell  was  heard,  and  Mrs.  Morton 
broke  off  into — 

"Well!  I  declare!  at  this  hour;  who  can  that  be?  And  all 
gone  to  bed  !  Do  go  and  see,  Mr.  Morton." 

Somewhat  reluctantly  and  slowly,  Mr.  Morton  rose ;  and,  pro- 
ceeding to  the  passage,  unbarred  the  door.  A  brief  and  muttered 
conversation  followed,  to  the  great  irritability  of  Mrs.  Morton, 
who  stood  in  the  passage,  the  candle  in  her  hand. 

"  What  is  the  matter,  Mr.  M.  ?  " 

Mr.  Morton  turned  back,  looking  agitated. 

"  Where's  my  hat?  oh,  here.     My  sister  is  come,  at  the  inn.5' 

"  Gracious  me  !  She  does  not  go  for  to  say  she  is  your  sister  ?  " 

"No,  no:  here's  her  note — calls  herself  a  lady  that's  ill.  I 
shall  be  back  soon." 

"  She  can't  come  here — she  shan't  come  here,  Mr.  M.  I'm  an 
honest  woman — she  can't  come  here.  You  understand — 

Mr.  Morton  had  naturally  a  stern  countenance,  stern  to  every 
one  but  his  wife.  The  shrill  tone  to  which  he  was  so  long  accus- 
tomed jarred  then  on  his  heart  as  well  as  ear.  He  frowned  : 

"Pshaw  !  woman,  you  have  no  feeling  !  "  said  he,  and  walked 
out  of  the  house,  pulling  his  hat  over  his  brows. 

That  was  the  only  rude  speech  Mr.  Morton  had  ever  made  to 
his  better  half.  She  treasured  it  up  in  her  heart  and  memory ;  it 
was  associated  with  the  sister  and  the  child  ;  and  she  was  not  a 
•woman  who  ever  forgave, 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  69 

Mr.  Morton  walked  rapidly  through  the  still,  moon-lit  streets, 
till  he  reached  the  inn.  A  club  was  held  that  night  in  one  of  the 
rooms  below;  and  as  he  crossed  the  threshold,  the  sound  of  "  hip 
— hip — hurrah!"  mingled  with  the  stamping  of  feet  and  the 
jingling  of  glasses,  saluted  his  entrance.  He  was  a  stiff,  sober, 
respectable  man  ;  a  man  who,  except  at  elections — he  was  a  great 
politician — mixed  in  none  of  the  revels  of  his  more  boisterous 
townsmen.  The  sounds,  the  spot,  were  ungeniai  to  him.  He 
paused,  and  the  color  of  shame  rose  to  his  brow.  He  was 
ashamed  to  be  there — ashamed  to  meet  the  desolate  and,  as  he 
believed,  erring  sister. 

A  pretty  maid-servant,  heated  and  flushed  with  orders  and  com- 
pliments, crossed  his  path,  with  a  tray  full  of  glasses. 

"  There's  a  lady  come  by  the  Telegraph?  " 

"Yes,  sir,  up-stairs,  No.  2,  Mr.  Morton." 

Mr.  Morton !  He  shrunk  at  the  sound  of  his  own  name. 
"My  wife's  right,"  he  muttered.  "After  all,  this  is  more 
unpleasant  than  I  thought  for." 

The  slight  stairs  shook  under  his  hasty  tread.  He  opened  the 
door  of  No.  2,  and  that  Catherine,  whom  he  had  last  seen  at  her 
age  of  gay  sixteen,  radiant  with  bloom,  and,  but  for  her  air  of 
pride,  the  model  for  a  Hebe, — that  Catherine,  old  ere  youth  was 
gone,  pale,  faded,  the  dark  hair  silvered  over,  the  cheeks  hollow, 
and  the  eye  dim, — that  Catherine  fell  upon  his  breast! 

"  God  bless  you,  brother !  How  kind  to  come!  How  long  since 
we  have  met !  " 

"Sit  down,  Catherine,  my  dear  sister.  You  are  faint;  you 
are  very  much  changed — very.  I  should  not  have  known  you." 

' '  Brother,  I  have  brought  my  boy :  it  is  painful  to  part  from 
him — very — very  painful :  but  it  is  right,  and  God's  will  be 
done."  She  turned,  as  she  spoke,  towards  a  little,  deformed, 
rickety  dwarf  of  a  sofa,  that  seemed  to  hide  itself  in  the  darkest 
corner  of  the  low,  gloomy  room  ;  and  Morton  followed  her. 
With  one  hand  she  removed  the  shawl  that  she  had  thrown  over 
the  child,  and  placing  the  forefinger  of  the  other  upon  her  lips — 
lips  that  smiled  then — she  whispered,  "  We  will  not  wake  him,  he 
is  so  tired.  But  I  would  not  put  him  to  bed  till  you  had  seen 
him/' 

And  there  slept  poor  Sidney,  his  fair  cheek  pillowed  on  his 
arm ;  the  soft,  silky  ringlets  thrown  from  the  delicate  and  un- 
clouded brow;  the  natural  bloom  increased  by  warmth  and 
travel ;  the  lovely  face  so  innocent  and  hushed  ;  the  breathing  so 
gentle  and  regular,  as  if  never  broken  by  a  sigh, 

Mr,  Mortpn  d.re\v  his  hand  across  his  eyes, 


70  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

There  was  something  very  touching  in  the  contrast  between 
that  wakeful,  anxious,  forlorn  woman,  and  the  slumber  of  the 
unconscious  boy.  And  in  that  moment,  what  breast  upon  which 
the  light  of  Christian  pity — of  natural  affection,  had  ever 
dawned,  would,  even  supposing  the  world's  judgment  were  true, 
have  recalled  Catherine's  reputed  error?  There  is  so  divine  a  holi- 
ness in  the  love  of  a  mother,  that,  no  matter  how  the  tie  that 
binds  her  to  the  child  was  formed,  she  becomes  as  it  were,  con- 
secrated and  sacred;  and  the  past  is  forgotten,  and  the  world  and 
its  harsh  verdicts  swept  away,  when  that  love  alone  is  visible ; 
and  the  God,  who  watches  over  the  little  one,  sheds  his  smile  over 
the  human  deputy,  in  whose  tenderness  there  breathes  His  own  ! 

"  You  will  be  kind  to  him — will  you  not?"  said  Mrs.  Morton, 
and  the  appeal  was  made  with  that  trustful,  almost  cheerful  tone 
which  implies,  '  Who  would  not  be  kind  to  a  thing  so  fair  and 
helpless ?'" He  is  very  sensitive  and  very  docile;  you  will  never 
have  occasion  to  say  a  hard  word  to  him — never !  You  have 
children  of  your  own,  brother  !  " 

"  He  is  a  beautiful  boy — beautiful.    I  will  be  a  father  to  him  !  " 

As  he  spoke, — the  recollection  of  his  wife — sour,  querulous, 
austere — came  over  him,  but  he  said  to  himself,  "She  must  take 
to  such  a  child ;  women  always  take  to  beauty." 

He  bent  down,  and  gently  pressed  his  lips  to  Sidney's  forehead : 
Mrs.  Morton  replaced  the  shawl,  and  drew  her  brother  to  the 
other  end  of  the  room. 

"And  now,"  she  said,  coloring  as  she  spoke,  "I  must  see  your 
wife,  brother :  there  is  so  much  to  say  about  a  child  that  only  a 
woman  will  recollect.  Is  she  very  good-tempered  and  kind,  your 
wife  ?  You  know  I  never  saw  her ;  you  married  after — after  I  left. " 

"She  is  a  very  worthy  woman,"  said  Mr.  Morton,  clearing  his 
throat,  "  and  brought  me  some  money  ;  she  has  a  will  of  her  own 
as  most  women  have  ;  but  that's  neither  here  nor  there — she  is  a 
good  wife  as  wives  go ;  and  prudent  and  painstaking — I  don't 
know  what  I  should  do  without  her." 

"Brother,  I  have  one  favor  to  request — a  great  favor." 

"  Anything  I  can  do  in  the  way  of  money?  " 

"It  has  nothing  to  do  with  money.  I  can't  live  long — don't 
shake  your  head — I  can't  live  long.  I  have  no  fear  for  Philip,  he 
has  so  much  spirit — such  strength  of  character ;  but  that  child  ! 
I  cannot  bear  to  leave  him  altogether :  let  me  stay  in  this  town — 
I  can  lodge  anywhere ;  but  to  see  him  sometimes — to  know  I  shall 
be  in  reach  if  he  is  ill — let  me  stay  here — let  me  die  here  I " 

"  You  must  not  talk  so  sadly ;  you  are  young  yet — younger  than 
I  am^,/ don' t&ink  of  dying." 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  71 

"  Heaven  forbid!  but—" 

"  Well — well,"  interrupted  Mr.  Morton,  who  began  to  fear  his 
feelings  would  hurry  him  into  some  promise  which  his  wife  would 
not  suffer  him  to  keep;  "you  shall  talk  to  Margaret, — that  is, 
Mrs.  Morton — 1  will  get  her  to  see  you — yes,  I  think  I  can  contrive 
that ;  and  if  you  can  arrange  with  her  to  stay ;  but,  you  see,  as 
she  brought  the  money,  and  is  a  very  particular  woman — " 

"I  will  see  her;  thank  you — thank  you;  she  cannot  refuse 
me." 

"  And,  brother,"  resumed  Mrs.  Morton,  after  a  short  pause, 
and  speaking  in  a  firm  voice — "and  is  it  possible  that  you  dis- 
believe my  story ;  that  you,  like  all  the  rest,  consider  my  children 
the  sons  of  shame  ?  ' ' 

There  was  an  honest  earnestness  in  Catherine's  voice,  as  she 
spoke,  that  might  have  convinced  many.  But  Mr.  Morton  was  a 
man  of  facts,  a  practical  man — a  man  who  believed  that  law  was 
always  right,  and  that  the  improbable  was  never  true. 

He  looked  down  as  he  answered,  "I  think  you  have  been  a 
very  ill-used  woman,  Catherine,  and  that  is  all  I  can  say  on  the 
matter  ;  let  us  drop  the  subject." 

"  No  !  I  was  not  ill-used  ;  my  husband — yes,  my  husband  was 
noble  and  generous  from  first  to  last.  It  was  for  the  sake  of  his 
children's  prospects — for  the  expectations  they,  through  him, 
might  derive  from  his  proud  uncle,  that  he  concealed  our  mar- 
riage. Do  not  blame  Philip;  do  not  condemn  the  dead." 

"I  don't  want  to  blame  any  one,"  said  Mr.  Morton,  rather 
angrily;  "  I  am  a  plain  man — a  tradesman,  and  can  only  go  by 
what  in  my  class  seems  fair  and  honest,  which  I  can't  think  Mr. 
Beaufort's  conduct  was,  put  it  how  you  will ;  if  he  marries  you  as 
you  think,  he  gets  rid  of  a  witness,  he  destroys  a  certificate,  and 
he  dies  without  a  will.  However,  all  that's  neither  here  nor  there. 
You  do  quite  right  not  to  take  the  name  of  Beaufort,  since  it  is  an 
uncommon  name,  and  would  always  make  the  story  public.  Least 
said,  soonest  mended.  You  must  always  consider  that  your  chil- 
dren will  be  called  natural  children,  and  have  their  own  way  to 
make.  No  harm  in  that !  Warm  day  for  your  journey."  Cathe- 
rine sighed,  and  wiped  her  eyes ;  she  no  longer  reproached  the 
world,  since  the  son  of  her  own  mother  disbelieved  her. 

The  relations  talked  together  for  some  minutes  on  the  past — the 
present;  but  there  was  embarrassment  and  constraint  on  both 
sides — it  was  so  difficult  to  avoid  one  subject ;  and  after  sixteen 
years  of  absence,  there  is  little  left  in  common,  even  between  those 
who  once  played  together  round  their  parents'  knees.  Mr.  Mor- 
ton was  glad  at  last  to  find  an  excuse  in  Catherine's  fatigue  to 


72  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

leave  her.  "Cheer  up,  and  take  a  glass  of  something  warm  before 
you  go  to  bed.  Good-night!  "  these  were  his  parting  words. 

Long  was  the  conference,  and  sleepless  the  couch,  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Morton.  At  first,  that  estimable  lady  positively  declared 
she  would  not  and  could  not  visit  Catherine  :  (as  to  receiving  her, 
that  was  out  of  the  question. )  But  she  secretly  resolved  to  give  up 
that  point  in  order  to  insist  with  greater  strength  upon  another 
— viz.,  the  impossibility  of  Catherine  remaining  in  the  town. 
Such  concession  for  the  purpose  of  resistance  being  a  very  com- 
mon and  sagacious  policy  with  married  ladies.  Accordingly, 
when  suddenly,  and  with  a  good  grace,  Mrs.  Morton  appeared 
affected  by  her  husband's  eloquence,  and  said,  "Well,  poor 
thing !  If  she  is  so  ill,  and  you  wish  it  so  much,  I  will  call  to- 
morrow," Mr.  Morton  felt  his  heart  softened  towards  the  many 
excellent  reasons  which  his  wife  urged  against  allowing  Catherine 
to  reside  in  the  town.  He  was  a  political  character — he  had 
many  enemies;  the  story  of  his  seduced  sister,  now  forgotten, 
would  certainly  be  raked  up,  it  would  affect  his  comfort,  perhaps 
his  trade,  certainly  his  eldest  daughter,  who  was  now  thirteen ; 
it  would  be  impossible  then  to  adopt  the  plan  hitherto  resolved 
upon — of  passing  off  Sidney  as  the  legitimate  orphan  of  a  distant 
relation  ;  it  would  be  made  a  great  handle  for  gossip  by  Miss  Pry- 
inall.  Added  to  all  these  reasons,  one  not  less  strong  occurred  to 
Mr.  Morton  himself :  the  uncommon  and  merciless  rigidity  of  his 
wife  would  render  all  the  other  women  in  the  town  very  glad  of 
any  topic  that  would  humble  her  own  sense  of  immaculate  pro- 
priety. Moreover,  he  saw  that  if  Catherine  did  remain,  it  would 
be  a  perpetual  source  of  irritation  in  his  own  home ;  he  was  a  man 
who  liked  an  easy  life,  and  avoided,  as  far  as  possible,  all  food 
for  domestic  worry.  And  thus,  when  at  length  the  wedded  pair 
turned  back  to  back,  and  composed  themselves  to  sleep,  the  con- 
ditions of  peace  were  settled,  and  the  weaker  party,  as  usual  in 
diplomacy,  sacrificed  to  the  interests  of  the  united  powers. 

After  breakfast  the  next  morning,  Mrs.  Morton  sallied  out  on 
her  husband's  arm.  Mr.  Morton  was  rather  a  handsome  man, 
with  an  air  and  look  grave,  composed,  severe,  that  had  tended 
much  to  raise  his  character  in  the  town.  Mrs.  Morton  was  short, 
wiry,  and  bony.  She  had  won  her  husband  by  making  desperate 
love  to  him,  to  say  nothing  of  a  dower  that  enabled  him  to  extend 
his  business,  new-front,  as  well  as  new-stock,  his  shop,  and  rise 
into  the  very  first  rank  of  tradesmen  in  his  native  town.  He  still 
believed  that  she  was  excessively  fond  of  him — a  common  delu- 
sion of  husbands,  especially  when  henpecked.  Mrs.  Morton  was, 
perhaps,  fond  of  him  in  her  own  way ;  for  though  her  heart  was 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  73 

not  warm,  there  may  be  a  great  deal  of  fondness  with  very  little 
feeling.  The  worthy  lady  was  now  clothed  in  her  best.  She  had 
a  proper  pride  in  showing  the  rewards  that  belong  to  female  vir- 
tue. Flowers  adorned  her  Leghorn  bonnet,  and  her  green  silk 
gown  boasted  four  flounces, — such  then  was,  I  am  told,  the  fashion. 
She  wore  also  a  very  handsome  black  shawl,  extremely  heavy, 
though  the  day  was  oppressively  hot,  and  with  a  deep  border ;  a 
smart  sevigne  brooch  of  yellow  topazes  glittered  in  her  breast ;  a 
huge  gilt  serpent  glared  from  her  waistband ;  her  hair,  or  more 
properly  speaking  her  front,  was  tortured  into  very  tight  curls,  and 
her  feet  into  very  tight  half-laced  boots,  from  which  the  fragrance 
of  new  leather  had  not  yet  departed.  It  was  this  last  infliction, 
for  il  faut  souffrir  pour  etre  belle,  which  somewhat  yet  more 
acerbated  the  ordinary  acid  of  Mrs.  Morton's  temper.  The  sweet- 
est disposition  is  ruffled  when  the  shoe  pinches;  and  it  so  hap- 
pened that  Mrs.  Roger  Morton  was  one  of  those  ladies  who  always 
have  chilblains  in  the  winter  and  corns  in  the  summer. 

'  So  you  say  your  sister  is  a  beauty?  " 

'  Was  a  beauty,  Mrs.  M., — was  a  beauty.     People  alter." 

'A  bad  conscience,  Mr.  Morton,  is — " 

'  My  dear,  can't  you  walk  faster? " 

'  If  you  had  my  corns,   Mr.   Morton,   you  would  not  talk  in 
that  way !  " 

The  happy  pair  sank  into  silence,  only  broken  by  sundry  "  How 
d'ye  dos?"  and  "Good-mornings!"  interchanged  with  theii 
friends,  till  they  arrived  at  the  inn. 

"  Let  us  go  up  quickly,"  said  Mrs.  Morton. 
And  quiet — quiet  to  gloom,  did  the  inn,  so  noisy  over-night, 
seem  by  morning.  The  shutters  partially  closed  to  keep  out  the 
sun ;  the  tap-room  deserted  ;  the  passage  smelling  of  stale  smoke — 
an  elderly  dog,  lazily  snapping  at  the  flies,  at  the  foot  of  the 
staircase ;  not  a  soul  to  be  seen  at  the  bar.  The  husband  and 
wife,  glad  to  be  unobserved,  crept  on  tiptoe  up  the  stairs,  and 
entered  Catherine's  apartment. 

Catherine  was  seated  on  the  sofa,  and  Sidney — dressed,  like 
Mrs.  Roger  Morton,  to  look  his  prettiest,  nor  yet  aware  of  the 
change  that  awaited  his  destiny,  but  pleased  at  the  excitement  of 
seeing  new  friends,  as  handsome  children  sure  of  praise  and  pet- 
ting usually  are — stood  by  her  side. 

"My  wife, — Catherine,"  said  Mr.  Morton.  Catherine  rose 
eagerly,  and  gazed  searchingly  on  her  sister-in-law's  hard  face. 
She  swallowed  the  convulsive  rising  at  her  heart  as  she  gazed,  and 
stretched  out  both  her  hands,  not  so  much  to  welcome  as  to  plead. 
Mrs.  Roger  Morton  drew  herself  up,  and  then  dropped  a  cour- 


74  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

tesy — it  was  an  involuntary  piece  of  good  breeding ;  it  was  extorted 
by  the  noble  countenance,  the  matronly  mien  of  Catherine,  dif- 
ferent from  what  she  had  anticipated — she  dropped  the  courtesy, 
and  Catherine  took  her  hand  and  pressed  it. 

"This  is  my  son";  she  turned  away  her  head.  Sidney 
advanced  towards  his  protectress  who  was  to  be,  and  Mrs.  Roger 
muttered : 

"  Come  here,  my  dear  !     A  fine  little  boy  !  " 

"As  fine  a  child  as  ever  I  saw  !  "  said  Mr.  Morton,  heartily, 
as  he  took  Sidney  on  his  lap,  and  stroked  down  his  golden  hair. 

This  displeased  Mrs.  Roger  Morton,  but  she  sat  herself  down, 
and  said  it  was  ' '  very  warm. ' ' 

"Now  go  to  that  lady,  my  dear,"  said  Mr.  Morton.  "  Is  she 
not  a  very  nice  lady? — don't  you  think  you  shall  like  her  very 
much?" 

Sidney,  the  best-mannered  child  in  the  world,  went  boldly  up 
to  Mrs.  Morton,  as  he  was  bid.  Mrs.  Morton  was  embarrassed. 
Some  folks  are  so  with  other  folk's  children :  a  child  either 
removes  all  constraint  from  a  party,  or  it  increases  the  constraint 
tenfold.  Mrs.  Morton,  however,  forced  a  smile,  and  said:  "I 
have  a  little  boy  at  home  about  your  age. ' ' 

"Have  you?"  exclaimed  Catherine,  eagerly;  and  as  if  that 
confession  made  them  friends  at  once,  she  drew  a  chair  close  to 
her  sister-in-law's  :  "  My  brother  has  told  you  all?  " 

"Yes,  ma'am." 

' '  And  I  shall  stay  here — in  the  town  somewhere — and  see  him 
sometimes  ? ' ' 

Mrs.  Roger  Morton  glanced  at  her  husband ;  her  husband 
glanced  at  the  door ;  and  Catherine's  quick  eye  turned  from  one 
to  the  other. 

"Mr.  Morton  will  explain,  ma'am,"  said  the  wife. 

"  E-hem  ! — Catherine,  my  dear,  I  am  afraid  that  is  out  of  the 
question,"  began  Mr.  Morton,  who,  when  fairly  put  to  it,  could 
be  business-like  enough.  "  You  see  bygones  are  bygones,  and  it 
is  no  use  raking  them  up.  But  many  people  in  the  town  will  recol- 
lect you." 

"  No  one  will  see  me — no  one,  but  you  and  Sidney." 

"  It  will  be  sure  to  creep  out ;  won't  it,  Mrs.  Morton  ?" 

"  Quite  sure.  Indeed,  ma'am,  it  is  impossible.  Mr.  Morton 
is  so  very  respectable,  and  his  neighbors  pay  so  much  attention  to 
all  he  does  ;  and  then,  if  we  have  an  election  in  the  autumn,  you 
see,  ma'am,  he  has  a  great  stake  in  the  place,  and  is  a  public 
character." 

"  That's  neither  here  nor  there,"  said  Mr.  Morton.     "But! 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  75 

say,  Catherine,  can  your  little  boy  go  into  the  other  room  for  a 
moment?  Margaret,  suppose  you  take  him  and  make  friends." 

Delighted  to  throw  on  her  husband  the  burden  of  explanation, 
which  she  had  originally  meant  to  have  all  the  importance  of  giv- 
ing herself  in  the  most  proper  and  patronizing  manner,  Mrs.  Mor- 
ton twisted  her  fingers  into  the  boy's  hand,  and,  opening  the 
door  that  communicated  with  the  bedroom,  left  the  brother  and 
sister  alone.  And  then  Mr.  Morton,  with  more  tact  and  delicacy 
than  might  have  been  expected  from  him,  began  to  soften  to 
Catherine  the  hardship  of  the  separation  he  urged.  He  dwelt 
principally  on  what  was  best  for  the  child.  Boys  were  so  brutal 
in  their  intercourse  with  each  other.  He  had  even  thought  it  bet- 
ter to  represent  Philip  to  Mr.  Plaskwith  as  a  more  distant  rela- 
tion than  he  was ;  and  he  begged,  by  the  bye,  that  Catherine 
would  tell  Philip  to  take  the  hint.  But  as  for  Sidney,  sooner  or 
later,  he  would  go  to  a  day-school — have  companions  of  his  own 
age;  if  his  birth  were  known,  he  would  be  exposed  to  many  mor- 
tifications ;  so  much  better,  and  so  very  easy,  to  bring  him  up  as 
the  lawful,  that  is  the  legal  offspring  of  some  distant  relation. 

"And,"  cried  poor  Catherine,  clasping  her  hands,  "when  I 
am  dead,  is  he  never  to  know  that  I  was  his  mother  ?" 

The  anguish  of  the  question  thrilled  the  heart  of  the  listener. 
He  was  affected  below  all  the  surface  that  worldly  thoughts  and 
habits  had  laid,  stratum  by  stratum,  over  the  humanities  within. 
He  threw  his  arms  round  Catherine,  and  strained  her  to  his 
breast, — 

"  No,  my  sister — my  poor  sister — he  shall  know  it  when  he  is 
old  enough  to  understand,  and  to  keep  his  own  secret.  He  shall 
know,  too,  how  we  all  loved  and  prized  you  once ;  how  young  you 
were,  how  flattered  and  tempted ;  how  you  were  deceived,  for  I 
know  that — on  my  soul  I  do — I  know  it  was  not  your  fault.  He 
shall  know,  too,  how  fondly  you  loved  your  child,  and  how  you 
sacrificed,  for  his  sake,  the  very  comfort  of  being  near  him.  He 
shall  know  it  all— all !  " 

' '  My  brother — my  brother,  I  resign  him ;  I  am  content.  God 
reward  you.  I  will  go — go  quickly.  I  know  you  will  take  care 
of  him  now." 

"And  you  see,"  resumed  Mr.  Morton,  re-settling  himself,  and 
wiping  his  eyes,  "  it  is  best,  between  you  and  me,  that  Mrs.  Mor- 
ton should  have  her  own  way  in  this.  She  is  a  very  good  woman 
— very ;  but  it's  prudent  not  to  vex  her.  You  may  come  in  now, 
Mrs.  Morton.  " 

Mrs.  Morton  and  Sidney  re-appeared. 


76  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

"  We  have  settled  it  all,"  said  the  husband.  "When  can  we 
have  him?" 

" Not  to-day,"  said  Mrs.  Roger  Morton  ;  "you  see,  ma'am,  we 
must  get  his  bed  ready,  and  his  sheets  well-aired  :  I  am  very  par- 
ticular." 

"  Certainly,  certainly.     Will  he  sleep  alone?     Pardon  me." 

"  He  shall  have  a  room  to  himself,"  said  Mr.  Morton.  "  Eh, 
my  dear  ?  Next  to  Martha's.  Martha  is  our  parlor-maid — very 
good-natured  girl,  and  fond  of  children." 

Mrs.  Morton  looked  grave,  thought  a  moment,  and  said,  "Yes, 
he  can  have  that  room." 

"  Who  can  have  that  room?  "  asked  Sidney,  innocently. 

"You,  my  dear,"  replied  Mr.  Morton. 

"And where  will  mamma  sleep ?  I  must  sleep  near  mamma." 

"Mamma  is  going  away,"  said  Catherine,  in  a  firm  voice,  in 
which  the  despair  would  only  have  been  felt  by  the  acute  ear  of 
sympathy ;  ' '  going  away  for  a  little  time ;  but  this  gentleman 
and  lady  will  be  very — very  kind  to  you." 

"  We  will  do  our  best,  ma'am,"  said  Mrs.  Morton. 

And  as  she  spoke,  a  sudden  light  broke  on  the  boy's  mind ;  he 
uttered  a  loud  cry,  broke  from  his  aunt,  rushed  to  his  mother's 
breast,  and  hid  his  face  there,  sobbing  bitterly. 

"  I  am  afraid  he  has  been  very  much  spoiled,"  whispered  Mrs. 
Roger  Morton.  "I  don't  think  we  need  stay  longer;  it  will 
look  suspicious.  Good-morning,  ma'am ;  we  shall  be  ready  to- 
morrow." 

"Good -by,  Catherine,"  said  Mr.  Morton;  and  he  added  as  he 
kissed  her,  "Be  of  good  heart ;  I  will  come  up  by  myself  and 
spend  the  evening  with  you." 

It  was  the  night  after  this  interview.  Sidney  had  gone  to  his 
new  home;  they  had  been  all  kind  to  him — Mr.  Morton,  the 
children,  Martha  the  parlor-maid.  Mrs.  Roger  herself  had  given 
him  a  large  slice  of  bread  and  jam,  but  had  looked  gloomy  all  the 
rest  of  the  evening  ;  because,  like  a  dog  in  a  strange  place,  he  re- 
fused to  eat.  His  little  heart  was  full,  and  his  eyes,  swimming 
with  tears,  were  turned  at  every  moment  to  the  door.  But  he  did 
not  show  the  violent  grief  that  might  have  been  expected.  His 
very  desolation,  amidst  the  unfamiliar  faces,  awed  and  chilled 
him.  But  when  Martha  took  him  to  bed,  and  undressed  him,  and 
he  knelt  down  to  say  his  prayers,  and  came  to  the  words,  "  Pray 
God  bless  dear  mamma,  and  make  me  a  good  child,"  his  heart 
could  contain  its  load  no  longer,  and  he  sobbed  with  a  passion 
that  alarmed  the  good-natured  servant.  She  had  been  used,  how- 
ever, to  children,  and  she  soothed  and  caressed  him,  and  told 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  77 

him  of  all  the  nice  things  he  would  do,  and  the  nice  toys  he 
would  have ;  and  at  last,  silenced,  if  not  convinced,  his  eyes 
closed,  and,  the  tears  yet  wet  on  their  lashes, — he  fell  asleep. 

It  had  been  arranged  that  Catherine  should  return  home  that 
night  by  a  late  coach,  which  left  the  town  at  twelve.  It  was  al- 
ready past  eleven.  Mrs.  Morton  had  retired  to  bed  ;  and  her  hus- 
band, who  had,  according  to  his  wont,  lingered  behind  to  smoke 
a  cigar  over  his  last  glass  of  brandy  and  water,  had  just  thrown 
aside  the  stump,  and  was  winding  up  his  watch,  when  he  heard  a 
low  tap  at  his  window.  He  stood  mute  and  alarmed,  for  the  win- 
dow opened  on  a  back  lane,  dark  and  solitary  at  night,  and, 
from  the  heat  of  the  weather,  the  iron-cased  shutter  was  not  yet 
closed ;  the  sound  was  repeated,  and  he  heard  a  faint  voice. 
He  glanced  at  the  poker,  and  then  cautiously  moved  to  the  win- 
dow, and  looked  forth;  "  Who's  there  ?  " 

4<  It  is  / — it  is  Catherine  !  I  cannot  go  without  seeing  my  boy. 
I  must  see  him — I  must,  once  more  !" 

"  My  dear  sister,  the  place  is  shut  up  ;  it  is  impossible.  God 
bless  me,  if  Mrs.  Morton  should  hear  you  ! ' ' 

"I  have  walked  before  this  window  for  hours;  I  have  waited 
till  all  is  hushed  in  your  house,  till  no  one,  not  even  a  menial, 
need  see  the  mother  stealing  to  the  bed  of  her  child.  Brother  ! 
by  the  memory  of  our  own  mother,  I  command  you  to  let  me 
look  for  the  last  time,  upon  my  boy's  face  !  " 

As  Catherine  said  this,  standing  in  that  lonely  street — darkness 
and  solitude  below,  God  and  the  stars  above — there  was  about  her 
a  majesty  which  awed  the  listener.  Though  she  was  so  near,  her 
features  were  not  very  clearly  visible  ;  but  her  attitude — her  hand 
raised  aloft — the  outline  of  her  wasted,  but  still  commanding, 
form,  were  more  impressive  from  the  shadowy  dimness  of  the  air. 

"Come  round,  Catherine,"  said  Mr.  Morton,  after  a  pause; 
"  I  will  admit  you." 

He  shut  the  window,  stole  to  the  door,  unbarred  it  gently,  and 
admitted  his  visitor.  He  bade  her  follow  him  ;  and  shading  the 
light  with  his  hand,  crept  up  the  stairs.  Catherine's  step  made  no 
sound. 

They  passed,  unmolested  and  unheard,  the  room  in  which  the 
wife  was  drowsily  reading,  according  to  her  custom,  before  she 
tied  her  nightcap  and  got  into  bed,  a  chapter  in  some  pious  book. 
They  ascended  to  the  chamber  where  Sidney  lay ;  Morton  opened 
the  door  cautiously,  and  stood  at  the  threshold,  so  holding  the 
candle,  that  its  light  might  not  wake  the  child,  though  it  sufficed 
to  guide  Catherine  to  the  bed.  The  room  was  small,  perhaps 
close,  but  scrupulously  clean ;  for  cleanliness  was  Mrs.  Roger 


78  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Morton's  capital  virtue.  The  mother,  with  a  tremulous  hand, 
drew  aside  the  white  curtains,  and  checked  her  sobs  as  she  gazed 
on  the  young  quiet  face  that  was  turned  towards  her.  She  gazed 
some  moments  in  passionate  silence ;  who  shall  say,  beneath  that 
silence,  what  thoughts,  what  prayers,  moved  and  stirred  ?  Then 
bending  down,  with  pale,  convulsive  lips  she  kissed  the  little 
hands  thrown  so  listlessly  on  the  coverlid  of  the  pillow  on  which 
the  head  lay.  After  this,  she  turned  her  face  to  her  brother, 
with  a  mute  appeal  in  her  glance,  took  a  ring  from  her  finger 
— a  ring  that  had  never  till  then  left  it — the  ring  which  Philip 
Beaufort  had  placed  there  the  day  after  that  child  was  born. 
"Let  him  wear  this  round  his  neck,"  said  she,  and  stopped, 
lest  she  should  sob  aloud,  and  disturb  the  boy.  In  that  gift  she 
felt  as  if  she  invoked  the  father's  spirit  to  watch  over  the  friend- 
less orphan ;  and  then,  pressing  together  her  own  hands  firmly, 
as  we  do  in  some  paroxysm  of  great  pain,  she  turned  from  the 
room,  descended  the  stairs,  gained  the  street,  and  muttered  to 
her  brother  :  "I  am  happy  now ;  peace  be  on  these  thresholds  ! ' ' 
Before  he  could  answer  she  was  gone. 

CHAPTER  IX. 

"Thus  things  are  strangely  wrought, 

While  joyful  May  doth  last ; 
Take  May  in  time — when  May  is  gone 

The  pleasant  time  is  past." 
— RICHARD  EDWARDS  :  From  the  Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices. 

IT  was  that  period  of  the  year  when,  to  those  who  look  on  the 
surface  of  society,  London  wears  its  most  radiant  smile;  when 
shops  are  gayest,  and  trade  most  brisk ;  when  down  the  thorough- 
fares roll  and  glitter  the  countless  streams  of  indolent  and  volup- 
tuous life;  when  the  upper  class  spend,  and  the  middle  class 
make  ;  when  the  ball-room  is  the  Market  of  Beauty,  and  the  club- 
house the  School  for  Scandal ;  when  the  hells  yawn  for  their 
prey,  and  opera-singers  and  fiddlers — creatures  hatched  from  gold, 
as  the  dung-flies  from  the  dung — swarm,  and  buzz,  and  fatten, 
round  the  hide  of  the  gentle  Public.  In  the  cant  phrase,  it  was 
"the  London  season."  And  happy,  take  it  altogether,  happy 
above  the  rest  of  the  year,  even  for  the  hapless,  is  that  period  of 
ferment  and  fever.  It  is  not  the  season  for  duns,  and  the  debtor 
glides  about  with  a  less  anxious  eye ;  and  the  weather  is  warm, 
and  the  vagrant  sleeps,  unfrozen,  under  the  starlit  portico  ;  and 
the  beggar  thrives,  and  the  thief  rejoices — for  the  rankness  of  the 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  79 

civilization  has  superfluities  clutched  by  all.  And  out  of  the 
general  corruption  things  sordid  and  things  miserable  crawl  forth 
to  bask  in  the  common  sunshine — things  that  perish  when  the 
first  autumn-winds  whistle  along  the  melancholy  city.  It  is  the 
gay  time  for  the  heir  and  the  beauty,  and  the  statesman  and  the 
lawyer,  and  the  mother  with  her  young  daughters,  and  the  artist 
with  his  fresh  pictures,  and  the  poet  with  his  new  book.  It  is  the 
gay  time,  too,  for  the  starved  journeyman,  and  the  ragged  out- 
cast that  with  long  stride  and  patient  eyes  follows,  for  pence,  the 
equestrian,  who  bids  him  go  and  be  d — d  in  vain.  It  is  a  gay 
time  for  the  painted  harlot  in  a  crimson  pelisse ;  and  a  gay  time 
for  the  old  hag  that  loiters  about  the  thresholds  of  the  gin-shop, 
to  buy  back,  in  a  draught,  the  dreams  of  departed  youth.  It  is 
gay,  in  fine,  as  the  fulness  of  a  vast  city  is  ever  gay — for  Vice  as 
for  Innocence,  for  Poverty  as  for  Wealth.  And  the  wheels  of 
every  single  destiny  wheel  on  the  merrier,  no  matter  whether  they 
are  bound  to  Heaven  or  to  Hell. 

Arthur  Beaufort,  the  young  heir,  was  at  his  father's  house.  He 
was  fresh  from  Oxford,  where  he  had  already  discovered  that 
learning  is  not  better  than  house  and  land.  Since  the  new  pros- 
pects opened  to  him,  Arthur  Beaufort  was  greatly  changed. 
Naturally  studious  and  prudent,  had  his  fortunes  remained  what 
they  had  been  before  his  uncle's  death,  he  would  probably  have 
become  a  laborious  and  distinguished  man.  But  though  his  abili- 
ties were  good,  he  had  not  those  restless  impulses  which  belong 
to  Genius — often  not  only  its  glory  but  its  curse.  The  Golden 
Rod  cast  his  energies  asleep  at  once.  Good-natured  to  a  fault, 
and  somewhat  vacillating  in  character,  he  adopted  the  manner 
and  the  code  of  the  rich  young  idlers  who  were  his  equals  at  col- 
lege. He  became,  like  them,  careless,  extravagant,  and  fond  of 
pleasure.  This  change,  if  it  deteriorated  his  mind,  improved  his 
exterior.  It  was  a  change  that  could  not  but  please  women  ;  and 
of  all  women  his  mother  the  most.  Mrs.  Beaufort  was  a  lady  of 
high  birth ;  and  in  marrying  her,  Robert  had  hoped  much  from 
the  interest  of  her  connections  ;  but  a  change  in  the  ministry  had 
thrown  her  relations  out  of  power ;  and,  beyond  her  dowry,  he 
obtained  no  worldly  advantage  with  the  lady  of  his  mercenary 
choice.  Mrs.  Beaufort  was  a  woman  whom  a  word  or  two  will 
describe.  She  was  thoroughly  commonplace ;  neither  bad  nor 
good,  neither  clever  nor  silly.  She  was  what  is  called  well-bred; 
that  is,  languid,  silent,  perfectly  dressed,  and  insipid.  Of  her 
two  children,  Arthur  was  almost  the  exclusive  favorite,  especially 
after  he  became  the  heir  to  such  brilliant  fortunes.  For  she  was 
so  much  the  mechanical  creature  of  the  world,  that  even  her 


8o  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

affection  was  warm  or  cold  in  proportion  as  the  world  shone  on 
it.  Without  being  absolutely  in  love  with  her  husband,  she 
liked  him— they  suited  each  other ;  and  (in  spite  of  all  the  temp- 
tations that  had  beset  her  in  their  earlier  years,  for  she  had  been 
esteemed  a  beauty,  and  lived,  as  worldly  people  must  do,  in  cir- 
cles where  examples  of  unpunished  gallantry  are  numerous  and 
contagious)  her  conduct  had  ever  been  scrupulously  correct.  She 
had  little  or  no  feeling  for  misfortunes  with  which  she  had  never 
come  into  contact ;  for  those  with  which  she  had,  such  as  the 
distresses  of  younger  sons,  or  the  errors  of  fashionable  women,  or 
the  disappointments  of  "a  proper  ambition,"  she  had  more  sym- 
pathy than  might  have  been  supposed,  and  touched  on  them  with 
all  the  tact  of  well-bred  charity  and  ladylike  forbearance.  Thus, 
though  she  was  regarded  as  a  strict  person  in  point  of  moral 
decorum,  yet  in  society  she  was  popular — as  women,  at  once 
pretty  and  inoffensive,  generally  are. 

To  do  Mrs.  Beaufort  justice,  she  had  not  been  privy  to  the  let- 
ter her  husband  wrote  to  Catherine,  although  not  wholly  innocent 
of  it.  The  fact  is,  that  Robert  had  never  mentioned  to  her  the 
peculiar  circumstances  that  made  Catherine  an  exception  from 
ordinary  rules — the  generous  propositions  of  his  brother  to  him 
the  night  before  his  death;  and,  whatever  his  incredulity  as  to 
the  alleged  private  marriage,  the  perfect  loyalty  and  faith  that 
Catherine  had  borne  to  the  deceased,  he  had  merely  observed, 
"I  must  do  something,  I  suppose,  for  that  woman:  she  very 
nearly  entrapped  my  poor  brother  into  marrying  her;  and  he 
would  then,  for  what  I  know,  have  cut  Arthur  out  of  the  estates. 
Still,  I  must  do  something  for  her — eh  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  think  so.     What  was  she  ? — very  low  ?  " 

"A  tradesman's  daughter." 

"The  children  should  be  provided  for  according  to  the  rank 
of  the  mother;  that's  the  general  rule  in  such  cases:  and  the 
mother  should  have  about  the  same  provision  she  might  have 
looked  for  if  she  had  married  a  tradesman  and  been  left  a  widow. 
I  dare  say  she  was  a  very  artful  kind  of  person,  and  don't  deserve 
anything ;  but  it  is  always  handsomer,  in  the  eyes  of  the  world, 
to  go  by  the  general  rules  people  lay  down  as  to  money  matters." 

So  spoke  Mrs.  Beaufort.  She  concluded  her  husband  had  set- 
tled the  matter,  and  never  again  recurred  to  it.  Indeed,  she  had 
never  liked  the  late  Mr.  Beaufort,  whom  she  considered  mauvais 
ton. 

In  the  breakfast-room  at  Mr.  Beaufort's,  the  mother  and  son 
were  seated;  the  former  at  work,  the  latter  lounging  by  the 
window :  they  were  not  alone. ,  In  a  large  elbow-chair  sat  a 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  81 

middle-aged  man,  listening,  or  appearing  to  listen,  to  the  prattle 
of  a  beautiful  little  girl — Arthur  Beaufort's  sister.  This  man  was 
not  handsome,  but  there  was  a  certain  elegance  in  his  air,  and  a 
certain  intelligence  in  his  countenance,  which  made  his  appear- 
ance pleasing.  He  had  that  kind  of  eye  which  is  often  seen  with 
red  hair — an  eye  of  a  reddish  hazel,  with  very  long  lashes  ;  the 
eyebrows  were  dark,  and  clearly  defined  ;  and  the  short  hair 
snowed  to  advantage  the  contour  of  a  small,  well-shaped  head. 
His  features  were  irregular ;  the  complexion  had  been  sanguine, 
but  was  now  faded,  and  a  yellow  tinge  mingled  with  the  red. 
His  face  was  more  wrinkled,  especially  round  the  eyes ;  which, 
when  he  laughed,  were  scarcely  visible — than  is  usual  even  in 
men  ten  years  older.  But  his  teeth  were  still  of  a  dazzling  white- 
ness ;  nor  was  there  any  trace  of  decayed  health  in  his  counte- 
nance. He  seemed  one  who  had  lived  hard,  but  who  had  much 
yet  left  in  the  lamp  wherewith  to  feed  the  wick.  At  the  first 
glance,  he  appeared  slight,  as  he  lolled  listlessly  in  his  chair — 
almost  fragile.  But,  at  a  nearer  examination,  you  perceived  that, 
in  spite  of  the  small  extremities  and  delicate  bones,  his  frame 
was  constitutionally  strong.  Without  being  broad  in  the  should- 
ers, he  was  exceedingly  deep  in  the  chest — deeper  than  men  who 
seemed  giants  by  his  side ;  and  his  gestures  had  the  ease  of  one 
accustomed  to  an  active  life.  He  had,  indeed,  been  celebrated 
in  his  youth  for  his  skill  in  athletic  exercises,  but  a  wound, 
received  in  a  duel  many  years  ago,  had  rendered  him  lame  for 
life — a  misfortune  which  interfered  with  his  former  habits,  and 
was  said  to  have  soured  his  temper.  This  personage,  whose  posi- 
tion and  character  will  be  described  hereafter,  was  Lord  Lilburne, 
the  brother  of  Mrs.  Beaufort. 

"So,  Camilla,"  said  Lord  Lilburne  to  his  niece,  as  carelessly, 
not  fondly,  he  stroked  down  her  glossy  ringlets,  "you  don't  like 
Berkeley  Square  as  you  did  Gloucester  Place." 

"  Oh,  no  !  not  half  so  much  !  You  see  I  never  walk  out  in  the 
fields,*  nor  make  daisy-chains  at  Primrose  Hill.  I  don't  know 
what  mamma  means,"  added  the  child,  in  a  whisper,  "  in  saying 
we  are  better  off  here. ' ' 

Lord  Lilburne  smiled,  but  the  smile  was  a  half  sneer. 

•'*  You  will  know  quite  soon  enough,  Camilla;  the  understand- 
ings of  young  ladies  grow  up  very  quickly  on  this  side  of  Oxford 
Street.  Well,  Arthur,  and  what  are  your  plans  to-day? " 

"Why,"  said  Arthur,  suppressing  a  yawn,  "I  have  promised 
to  ride  out  with  a  friend  of  mine,  to  see  a  horse  that  is  for  sale, 
somewhere  in  the  suburbs." 

*Now  the  Regent's  Park 


82  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

As  he  spoke,  Arthur  rose,  stretched  himself,  looked  in  the  glass, 
and  then  glanced  impatiently  at  the  window. 

"  He  ought  to  be  here  by  this  time." 

"He!  who?"  said  Lord  Lilburne,  "the  horse  or  the  other 
animal — I  mean  the  friend  ? ' ' 

"  The  friend,"  answered  Arthur,  smiling,  but  coloring  while  he 
smiled,  for  he  half  suspected  the  quiet  sneer  of  his  uncle. 

"  Who  is  your  friend,  Arthur?  "  asked  Mrs.  Beaufort,  looking 
up  from  her  work. 

"  Watson,  an  Oxford  man.  By  the  by,  I  must  introduce  him 
to  you." 

' '  Watson  !  what  Watson  ?  what  family  of  Watsons  ?  Some 
Watsons  are  good  and  some  are  bad,"  said  Mrs.  Beaufort 
musingly. 

"Then  they  are  very  unlike  the  rest  of  mankind,"  observed 
Lord  Lilburne,  drily. 

"  Oh  !  my  Watson  is  a  very  gentlemanlike  person,  I  assure  you," 
said  Arthur,  half-laughing,  "  and  you  need  not  be  ashamed  of 
him."  Then,  rather  desirous  of  turning  the  conversation,  he 
continued,  "  So  my  father  will  be  back  from  Beaufort  Court  to- 
day." 

"Yes;  he  writes  in  excellent  spirits.  He  says  the  rents  will 
bear  raising  at  least  ten  per  cent. ,  and  that  the  house  will  not  require 
much  repair." 

Here  Arthur  threw  open  the  window. 

"Ah,  Watson!  how  are  you?  How  d'ye  do,  Marsden?  Dan- 
vers,  too !  that's  capital !  the  more  the  merrier  !  I  will  be  down 
in  an  instant.  But  would  you  not  rather  come  in  ?  " 

"An  agreeable  inundation,"  murmured  Lord  Lilburne. 
"Three  at  a  time  :  he  takes  your  house  for  Trinity  College." 

A  loud,  clear  voice,  however,  declined  the  invitation ;  the 
horses  were  heard  pawing  without.  Arthur  seized  his  hat  and 
whip,  and  glanced  to  his  mother  and  uncle,  smilingly.  "  Good- 
by  !  I  shall  be  out  till  dinner.  Kiss  me,  my  pretty  Milly  !  " 
And  as  his  sister,  who  had  run  to  the  window,  sickening  for  the 
fresh  air  and  exercise  he  was  about  to  enjoy,  now  turned  to  him 
wistful  and  mournful  eyes,  the  kind-hearted  young  man  took  her 
in  his  arms,  and  whispered  while  he  kissed  her  : 

"  Get  up  early  to-morrow,  and  we'll  have  such  a  nice  walk 
together." 

Arthur  was  gone  :  his  mother's  gaze  had  followed  his  young  and 
graceful  figure  to  the  door. 

"Own  that  he  is  handsome,  Lilburne.  May  I  not  say  more  : 
has  he  not  the  proper  air  ?  " 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  83 

"  My  dear  sister,  your  son  will  be  rich.  As  for  his  air,  he  has 
plenty  of  airs,  but  wants  graces. ' ' 

"  Then  who  could  polish  him  like  yourself?  " 

"  Probably  no  one.  But  had  I  a  son — which  Heaven  forbid  ! 
— he  should  not  have  me  for  his  Mentor.  Place  a  young  man  (go 
and  shut  the  door,  Camilla  !  )  between  two  vices — women  and 
gambling,  if  you  want  to  polish  him  into  the  fashionable  smooth- 
ness. Entre  nous,  the  varnish  is  a  little  expensive  !  " 

Mrs.  Beaufort  sighed.  Lord  Lilburne  smiled.  He  had  a 
strange  pleasure  in  hurting  the  feelings  of  others.  Besides,  he 
disliked  youth  :  in  his  own  youth  he  had  enjoyed  so  much  that  he 
grew  sour  when  he  saw  the  young. 

Meanwhile  Arthur  Beaufort  and  his  friends,  careless  of  the 
warmth  of  the  day,  were  laughing  merrily,  and  talking  gaily,  as 
they  made  for  the  suburb  of  H . 

"It  is  an  out-of-the-way  place  for  a  horse,  too,"  said  Sir  Harry 
Danvers. 

"But  I  assure  you,"  insisted  Mr.  Watson,  earnestly,  "  that  my 
groom,  who  is  a  capital  judge,  says  it  is  the  cleverest  hack  he  ever 
mounted.  It  has  won  several  trotting  matches.  It  belonged  to  a 
sporting  tradesman,  now  done  up.  The  advertisement  caught 
me." 

"  Well,"  said  Arthur  gaily,  "  at  all  events,  the  ride  is  delight- 
ful. What  weather  !  You  must  all  dine  with  me  at  Richmond 
to-morrow;  we  will  row  back." 

"And  a  little  chicken  hazard,  at  the  M ,  afterwards,"  said 

Mr.  Marsden,  who  was  an  elder,  not  a  better  man  than  the  rest — 
a  handsome,  saturnine  man  who  had  just  left  Oxford,  and  was 
already  known  on  the  turf. 

"  Anything  you  please,"  said  Arthur,  making  his  horse  curvet. 

Oh,  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort !  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort !  could  your 
prudent,  scheming,  worldly  heart  but  feel  what  devil's  tricks  your 
wealth  was  playing  with  a  son  who  if  poor  had  been  the  pride  of 
the  Beauforts  !  On  one  side  of  our  pieces  of  gold  we  see  the  saint 
trampling  down  the  dragon.  False  emblem  !  Reverse  it  on  the 
coin  !  In  the  real  use  of  the  gold,  it  is  the  dragon  who  tramples 
down  the  saint !  But  on — on  !  the  day  is  bright  and  your  com- 
panions merry ;  make  the  best  of  your  green  years,  Arthur  Beau- 
fort! 

The  young  men  had  just  entered  the  suburb  of  H ,  and 

were  spurring  on  four  abreast  at  a  canter.  At  that  time  an  old 
man,  feeling  his  way  before  him  with  a  stick, — for  though  not 
quite  blind,  he  saw  imperfectly, — was  crossing  the  road.  Arthur 
and  his  friends,  in  loud  converse,  did  not  observe  the  poor  pas- 


84  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

senger.  He  stopped  abruptly,  for  his  ear  caught  the  sound  of 
danger — it  was  too  late  :  Mr.  Marsden's  horse,  hard-mouthed,  and 
high-stepping,  came  full  against  him.  Mr.  Marsden  looked  down — 

"  Hang  these  old  men  !  always  in  the  way,"  said  he,  plain- 
tively, and  in  the  tone  of  a  much-injured  person,  and,  with  that, 
Mr.  Marsden  rode  on.  But  the  others  who  were  younger ;  who 
were  not  gamblers ;  who  were  not  yet  grinded  down  into  stone  by 
the  world's  wheels — the  others  halted.  Arthur  Beaufort  leaped 
from  his  horse,  and  the  old  man  was  already  in  his  arms ;  but  he 
was  severely  hurt.  The  blood  trickled  from  his  forehead ;  he 
complained  of  pain  in  his  side  and  limbs. 

"Lean  on  me,  my  poor  fellow!  I  will  take  you  home.  Do 
you  live  far  off?" 

"Not  many  yards.  This  would  not  have  happened  if  I  had 
had  my  dog.  Never  mind,  sir,  go  your  way.  It  is  only  an  old 
man — what  of  that  ?  I  wish  I  had  my  dog." 

"  I  will  join  you,"  said  Arthur  to  his  friends  ;  "  my  groom  has 
the  direction.  I  will  just  take  the  poor  old  man  home,  and  send 
for  a  surgeon.  I  shall  not  be  long." 

"So  like  you,  Beaufort:  the  best  fellow  in  the  world  !"  said 
Mr.  Watson,  with  some  emotion.  "  And  there's  Marsden  posi- 
tively dismounted,  and  looking  at  his  horse's  knees  as  if  they 
could  be  hurt !  Here's  a  sovereign  for  you,  my  man." 

"And  here's  another,"  said  Sir  Harry;  "so  that's  settled. 
Well,  you  will  join  us  Beaufort  ?  You  see  the  yard  yonder. 
We'll  wait  twenty  minutes  for  you.  Come  on,  Watson." 

The  old  man  had  not  picked  up  the  sovereigns  thrown  at  his 
feet,  neither  had  he  thanked  the  donors.  And  on  his  counte- 
nance there  was  a  sour,  querulous,  resentful  expression. 

"  Must  a  man  be  a  beggar  because  he  is  run  over,  or  because 
he  is  half  blind  ?  "  said  he,  turning  his  dim,  wandering  eyes  pain- 
fully towards  Arthur.  "  Well,  I  wish  I  had  my  dog  !  " 

"I  will  supply  his  place,"  said  Arthur,  soothingly.  "Come, 
lean  on  me — heavier;  that's  right.  You  are  not  so  bad, — eh?" 

"  Um  !  the  sovereigns  ! —  it  is  wicked  to  leave  them  in  the  ken- 
nel !  " 

Arthur  smiled.     "  Here  they  are,  sir." 

The  old  man  slid  the  coins  into  his  pocket,  and  Arthur  con- 
tinued to  talk,  though  he  got  but  short  answers,  and  those  only 
in  the  way  of  direction,  till  at  last  the  old  man  stopped  at  the 
door  of  a  small  house,  near  the  church-yard. 

After  twice  ringing  the  bell,  the  door  was  opened  by  a  middle- 
aged  woman,  whose  appearance  was  above  that  of  a  common 
menial ;  dressed,  somewhat  gaily  for  her  years,  in  a  cap  seated 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  85 

very  far  back  on  a  black  toupet,  and  decorated  with  red  ribands, 
an  apron  made  out  of  an  Indian  silk  handkerchief,  a  puce-col- 
ored sarcenet  gown,  black  silk  stockings,  long  gilt  earrings,  and 
a  watch  at  her  girdle. 

"  Bless  us,  and  save  us,  sir  !  What  has  happened  ?  "  exclaimed 
this  worthy  personage,  holding  up  her  hands. 

"Pish!  I  am  faint:  let  me  in.  I  don't  want  your  aid  any- 
more, sir.  Thank  you.  Good-day  !  " 

Not  discouraged  by  this  farewell,  the  churlish  tone  of  which 
fell  harmless  on  the  invincibly  sweet  temper  of  Arthur,  the  young 
man  continued  to  assist  the  sufferer  along  the  narrow  passage  into 
a  little  old-fashioned  parlor  ;  and  no  sooner  was  the  owner  depos- 
ited on  his  worm-eaten  leather  chair  than  he  fainted  away.  On 
reaching  the  house,  Arthur  had  sent  his  servant  (who  had  fol- 
lowed him  with  the  horses)  for  the  nearest  surgeon ;  and  while 
the  woman  was  still  employed,  after  taking  off  the  sufferer's  cra- 
vat, in  burning  feathers  under  his  nose,  there  was  heard  a  sharp 
rap  and  a  shrill  ring.  Arthur  opened  the  door,  and  admitted  a 
smart  little  man  in  nankeen  breeches  and  gaiters.  He  bustled 
into  the  room. 

"  What's  this — bad  accident — um — um  !  Sad  thing,  very  sad. 
Open  the  window.  A  glass  of  water — a  towel.  So — so  :  I  see — 
I  see;  no  fracture — contusion.  Help  him  off  with  his  coat. 
Another  chair,  ma'am ;  put  up  his  poor  legs.  What  age  is  he, 
ma'am?  Sixty-eight!  Too  old  to  bleed.  Thank  you.  How  is 
it,  sir  ?  Poorly,  to  be  sure  :  will  be  comfortable  presently — faint- 
ish  still  ?  Soon  put  all  to  rights." 

"Tray!  Tray!  Where's  Tray?  Where's  my  dog,  Mrs. 
Boxer?" 

"  Lord,  sir,  what  do  you  want  with  your  dog  now  ?  He  is  in 
the  back-yard." 

"  And  what  business  has  my  dog  in  the  back-yard?"  almost 
screamed  the  sufferer,  in  accents  that  denoted  no  diminution  of 
vigor.  ' '  I  thought  as  soon  as  my  back  was  turned  my  dog  would 
be  ill-used  !  Why  did  I  go  without  my  dog?  Let  in  my  dog 
directly,  Mrs.  Boxer  !  " 

"  All  right,  you  see,  sir,"  said  the  apothecary,  turning  to  Beau- 
fort, "no  cause  for  alarm;  very  comforting  that  little  passion ; 
does  him  good  :  sets  one's  mind  easy.  How  did  it  happen  ?  Ah, 
I  understand  !  knocked  down ;  might  have  been  worse.  Your 
groom  (sharp  fellow  !)  explained  in  a  trice,  sir.  Thought  it  was 
my  old  friend  here  by  the  description.  Worthy  man — settled  here 
a  many  year- — very  odd — eccentric  (this  in  a  whisper).  Came 
off  instantly :  just  at  dinner — cold  lamb  and  salad.  '  Mrs.  Per- 


86  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

kins, '  says  I,  '  if  any  one  calls  for  me,  I  shall  be  at  No.  4  Pros- 
pect Place.'  Your  servant  observed  the  address,  sir.  Oh,  very 
sharp  fellow  !  See  how  the  old  gentleman  takes  to  his  dog — fine 
little  dog  ;  what  a  stump  of  a  tail !  Deal  of  practice  ;  expect  two 
accouchements  every  hour.  Hot  weather  for  child-birth.  So 
says  I  to  Mrs.  Perkins,  '  If  Mrs.  Plummer  is  taken,  or  Mrs. 
Everat,  or  if  old  Mr.  Grub  has  another  fit,  send  off  at  once  to  No. 
4.  Medical  men  should  be  always  in  the  way — that's  my  maxim. 
— Now,  sir,  where  do  you  feel  the  pain  ?  " 

"  In  my  ears,  sir." 

"  Bless  me,  that  looks  bad.     How  long  have  you  felt  it  ?  " 

"  Ever  since  you  have  been  in  the  room." 

"Oh!  I  take.  Ha!  ha! — very  eccentric — very!"  muttered 
the  apothecary,  a  little  disconcerted.  "  Well,  let  him  lie  down, 
ma'am.  I'll  send  him  a  little  quieting  draught  to  be  taken 
directly — pill  at  night,  aperient  in  the  morning.  If  wanted,  send 
for  me — always  to  be  found.  Bless  me,  that's  my  boy  Bob's  ring  ! 
Please  to  open  the  door,  ma'am.  Know  his  ring — very  peculiar 
knock  of  his  own.  Lay  ten  to  one  it  is  Mrs.  Plummer,  or,  per- 
haps, Mrs.  Everat — her  ninth  child  in  eight  years — in  the  gro- 
cery line.  A  woman  in  a  thousand,  sir  !  " 

Here  a  thin  boy,  with  very  short  coat-sleeves,  and  very  large 
hands,  burst  into  the  room  with  his  mouth  open. 

"  Sir — Mr.  Perkins— sir  !  " 

"  I  know — I  know — coming.    Mrs.  Plummer  or  Mrs.  Everat?  " 

"No,  sir;  it  be  the  poor  lady  at  Mrs.  Lacy's ;  she  be  taken 
desperate.  Mrs.  Lacy's  girl  has  just  been  over  to  the  shop,  and 
made  me  run  here  to  you,  sir." 

"  Mrs.  Lacy's  !  oh,  I  know.  Poor  Mrs.  Morton  !  Bad  case — 
very  bad — must  be  off.  Keep  him  quiet,  ma'am.  Good  day ! 
Look  in  to-morrow — nine  o'clock.  Put  a  little  lint  with  the 
lotion  on  the  head,  ma'am.  Mrs.  Morton  !  Ah  !  bad  job  that." 

Here  the  apothecary  had  shuffled  himself  off  to  the  street  door, 
when  Arthur  laid  his  hand  on  his  arm. 

' '  Mrs.  Morton !  Did  you  say  Morton,  sir  ?  What  kind  of  a 
person  !  Is  she  very  ill?  " 

"  Hopeless  case,  sir — general  break-up.  Nice  woman — quite 
the  lady — known  better  days,  I'm  sure." 

"  Has  she  any  children — sons?  " 

' '  Two — both  away  now — fine  lads — quite  wrapped  up  in  them 
— youngest  especially." 

"Good  heavens !  it  must  be  she — ill,  and  dying,  and  destitute, 
perhaps,"  exclaimed  Arthur,  with  real  and  deep  feeling;  "I  will 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  87 

go  with  you,  sir.  I  fancy  that  I  know  this  lady,  that  (he  added 
generously)  I  am  related  to  her." 

3   "Do  you? glad  to  hear  it.     Come  along  then;  she  ought  to 

have  some  one  near  her  besides  servants :  not  but  what  Jenny, 
the  maid,  is  uncommonly  kind.  Dr.  -  — ,  who  attends  her 
sometimes,  said  to  me,  says  he,  '  It  is  the  mind,  Mr.  Perkins- 
I  wish  we  could  get  back  her  boys.' ' 

"  And  where  are  they  ?  " 

"  Trenticed  out,  I  fancy.     Master  Sidney — " 

"Sidney!" 

"  Ah  !  that  was  his  name — pretty  name.  D'ye  know  Sir  Sid- 
ney Smith  ?  Extraordinary  man,  sir  !  Master  Sidney  was  a  beau- 
tiful child quite  spoiled.  She  always  fancied  him  ailing — 

always  sending  for  me.  'Mr.  Perkins,'  said  she,  'there's  some- 
thing the  matter  with  my  child ;  I'm  sure  there  is,  though  he 
won't  own  it.  He  has  lost  his  appetite — had  a  headache  last 
night.'  '  Nothing  the  matter,  ma'am,'  says  I,  '  wish  you'd  think 
more  of  yourself.'  These  mothers  are  silly,  anxious,  poor  crea- 
tures. Nater,  sir,  nater — wonderful  thing — nater  ! — Here  we 
are." 

And  the  apothecary  knocked  at  the  private  door  of  a  milliner 
and  hosier's  shop. 

CHAPTER  X. 

"Thy  child  shall  live,  and  I  will  see  it  nourished." — Titus  Andronieus. 

As  might  be  expected,  the  excitement  and  fatigue  of  Cather- 
ine's journey  to  N had  considerably  accelerated  the  progress 

of  disease.  And  when  she  reached  home,  and  looked  round  the 
cheerless  rooms,  all  solitary,  all  hushed — Sidney  gone,  gone  from 
her  for  ever ;  she  felt,  indeed,  as  if  the  last  reed  on  which  she 
had  leaned  was  broken,  and  her  business  upon  earth  was  done. 
Catherine  was  not  condemned  to  absolute  poverty — the  poverty 
which  grinds  and  gnaws,  the  poverty  of  rags  and  famine.  She 
had  still  left  nearly  half  of  such  portion  of  the  little  capital, 
realized  by  the  sale  of  her  trinkets,  as  had  escaped  the  clutch  of 
the  law ;  and  her  brother  had  forced  into  her  hands  a  note  for 
£20,  with  an  assurance  that  the  same  sum  should  be  paid  to  her 
half-yearly.  Alas !  there  was  little  chance  of  her  needing  it 
again  !  She  was  not,  then,  in  want  of  means  to  procure  the 
common  comforts  of  life.  But  now  a  new  passion  had  entered 
into  her  breast — the  passion  of  the  miser ;  she  wished  to  hoard 
every  sixpence  as  some  little  provision  for  her  children.  What 


88  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

was  the  use  of  her  feeding  a  lamp  nearly  extinguished,  and  which 
was  fated  to  be  soon  broken  up  and  cast  amidst  the  vast  lumber- 
house  of  Death?  She  would  willingly  have  removed  into  a  more 
homely  lodging,  but  the  servant  of  the  house  had  been  so  fond 
of  Sidney — so  kind  to  him.  She  clung  to  one  familiar  face  on 
which  there  seemed  to  live  the  reflection  of  her  child's.  But  she 
relinquished  the  first  floor  for  the  second ;  and  there,  day  by  day, 
she  felt  her  eyes  grow  heavier  and  heavier  beneath  the  clouds  of 
the  last  sleep.  Besides  the  aid  of  Mr.  Perkins,  a  kind  enough 
man  in  his  way,  the  good  physician,  whom  she  had  before  con- 
sulted, still  attended  her,  and — refused  his  fee.  Shocked  at  per- 
ceiving that  she  rejected  every  little  alleviation  of  her  condition, 
and  wishing  at  least  to  procure  for  her  last  hours  the  society  of 
one  of  her  sons,  he  had  inquired  the  address  of  the  elder ;  and 
on  the  day  preceding  the  one  in  which  Arthur  discovered  her 
abode,  he  despatched  to  Philip  the  following  letter: 

"Sm, — Being  called  in  to  attend  your  mother  in  a  lingering 
illness,  which  I  fear  may  prove  fatal,  I  think  it  my  duty  to 
request  you  to  come  to  her  as  soon  as  you  receive  this.  Your 
presence  cannot  but  be  a  great  comfort  to  her.  The  nature  of 
her  illness  is  such  that  it  is  impossible  to  calculate  exactly  how 
long  she  may  be  spared  to  you ;  but  I  am  sure  her  fate  might  be 
prolonged,  and  her  remaining  days  more  happy,  if  she  could  be 
induced  to  remove  into  a  better  air  and  a  more  quiet  neighbor- 
hood, to  take  more  generous  sustenance,  and,  above  all,  if  her 
mind  could  be  set  more  at  ease  as  to  your  and  your  brother's 
prospects.  You  must  pardon  me  if  I  have  seemed  inquisitive : 
but  I  have  sought  to  draw  from  your  mother  some  particulars  as 
to  her  family  and  connections,  with  a  wish  to  represent  to  them 
her  state  of  mind.  She  is,  however,  very  reserved  on  these 
points.  If,  however,  you  have  relations  well  to  do  in  the  world, 
I  think  some  application  to  them  should  be  made.  I  fear  the 
state  of  her  affairs  weighs  much  upon  your  poor  mother's  mind  ; 
and  I  must  leave  you  to  judge  how  far  it  can  be  relieved  by  the 
good  feeling  of  any  persons  upon  whom  she  may  have  legitimate 
claims.  At  all  events,  I  repeat  my  wish  that  you  should  come  to 
her  forthwith.  "  I  am,  etc., 


After  the  physician  had  despatched  this  letter,  a  sudden  and 
marked  alteration  for  the  worse  took  place  in  his  patient's  dis- 
order; and  in  the  visit  he  had  paid  that  morning,  he  saw  cause 
to  fear  that  her  hours  on  earth  would  be  much  fewer  than  he  had 
before  anticipated.  He  had  left  her,  however,  comparatively 


NIGHT    AND   MORNING.  89 

better ;  but  two  hours  after  his  departure,  the  symptoms  of  her 
disease  had  become  very  alarming,  and  the  good-natured  servant 
girl,  her  sole  nurse,  and  who  had,  moreover,  the  whole  business 
of  the  other  lodgers  to  attend  to,  had,  as  we  have  seen,  thought  it 
necessary  to  summon  the  apothecary  in  the  interval  that  must 
elapse  before  she  could  reach  the  distant  part  of  the  metropolis  in 
which  Dr. resided. 

On  entering  the  chamber,  Arthur  felt  all  the  remorse,  which  of 
right  belonged  to  his  father,  press  heavily  on  his  soul.  What  a 
contrast,  that  mean  and  solitary  chamber,  and  its  comfortless 
appurtenances,  to  the  graceful  and  luxurious  abode,  where  full  of 
health  and  hope  he  had  last  beheld  her,  the  mother  of  Philip 
Beaufort's  children  !  He  remained  silent  till  Mr.  Perkins,  after  a 
few  questions,  retired  to  send  his  drugs.  He  then  approached  the 
bed ;  Catherine,  though  very  weak  and  suffering  much  pain,  was 
still  sensible.  She  turned  her  dim  eyes  on  the  young  man ;  but 
she  did  not  recognize  his  features. 

"You  do  not  remember  me?"  said  he,  in  a  voice  struggling 
with  tears  :  "  I  am  Arthur — Arthur  Beaufort." 

Catherine  made  no  answer. 

"  Good  Heavens  !  Why  do  I  see  you  here?  I  believed  you  with 
your  friends — your  children ;  provided  for — as  became  my  father 
to  do.  He  assured  me  that  you  were  so." 

Still  no  answer. 

And  then  the  young  man,  overpowered  with  the  feelings  of  a 
sympathizing  and  generous  nature,  forgetting  for  awhile  Cather- 
ine's weakness,  poured  forth  a  torrent  of  inquiries,  regrets,  and 
self-upbraidings,  which  Catherine  at  first  little  heeded.  But  the 
name  of  her  children  repeated  again  and  again  struck  upon  that 
chord  which,  in  a  woman's  heart,  is  the  last  to  break;  and  she 
raised  herself  in  her  bed,  and  looked  at  her  visitor  wistfully. 

"Your  father,"  she  said,  then — "  your  father  was  unlike  my 
Philip :  but  I  see  things  differently  now.  For  me,  all  bounty  is  too 
late;  but  my  children — to-morrow  they  may  have  no  mother.  The 
law  is  with  you,  but  not  justice  !  You  will  be  rich  and  powerful ; 
will  you  befriend  my  children?" 

"  Through  life,  so  help  me  Heaven  !  "  exclaimed  Arthur,  fall- 
ing on  his  knees  beside  the  bed. 

What  then  passed  between  them  it  is  needless  to  detail ;  for  it 
was  little,  save  broken  repetitions  of  the  same  prayer  and  the  same 
response.  But  there  was  so  much  truth  and  earnestness  in 
Arthur's  voice  and  countenance,  that  Catherine  felt  as  if  an  angel 
had  come  there  to  administer  comfort.  And  when  late  in  the 
day  the  physician  entered,  he  found  his  patient  leaning  on  the 


90  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

breast  of  her  young  visitor,  and  looking  on  his  face  with  a  happy 
smile. 

The  physician  gathered  enough  from  the  appearance  of  Arthur 
and  the  gossip  of  Mr.  Perkins,  to  conjecture  that  one  of  the  rich 
relations  he  had  attributed  to  Catherine,  was  arrived.  Alas !  for 
her  it  was  now  indeed  too  late ! 

CHAPTER  XL 

"  D'ye  stand  amazed  ? — Look  o'er  thy  head,  Maximinian 
Look  to  the  terror  which  overhangs  thee." 

BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  ;  The  Prophetess. 

PHILIP  had  been  five  weeks  in  his  new  home ;  in  another  week, 
he  was  to  enter  on  his  articles  of  apprenticeship.  With  a  stern, 
unbending  gloom  of  manner,  he  had  commenced  the  duties  of 
his  novitiate.  He  submitted  to  all  that  was  enjoined  him.  He 
seemed  to  have  lost  for  ever  the  wild  and  unruly  waywardness 
that  had  stamped  his  boyhood  ;  but  he  was  never  seen  to  smile — 
he  scarcely  ever  opened  his  lips.  His  very  soul  seemed  to  have 
quitted  him  with  its  faults ;  and  he  performed  all  the  functions 
of  his  situation  with  the  quiet  listless  regularity  of  a  machine. 
Only  when  the  work  was  done  and  the  shop  closed,  instead  of 
joining  the  family  circle  in  the  back-parlor,  he  would  stroll  out  in 
the  dusk  of  the  evening,  away  from  the  town,  and  not  return 
till  the  hour  at  which  the  family  retired  to  rest.  Punctual  in  all 
he  did,  he  never  exceeded  that  hour.  He  had  heard  once  a  week 
from  his  mother ;  and  only  on  the  mornings  in  which  he  expected 
a  letter,  did  he  seem  restless  and  agitated.  Till  the  postman 
entered  the  shop,  he  was  as  pale  as  death — his  hands  trembling — 
his  lips  compressed.  When  he  read  the  letter  he  became  com- 
posed ;  for  Catherine  sedulously  concealed  from  her  son  the  state 
of  her  health  :  she  wrote  cheerfully,  besought  him  to  content 
himself  with  the  state  into  which  he  had  fallen,  and  expressed  her 
joy  that  in  his  letters  he  intimated  that  content;  for  the  poor 
boy's  letters  were  not  less  considerate  than  her  own.  On  her 
return  from  her  brother,  she  had  so  far  silenced  or  concealed  her 
misgivings  as  to  express  satisfaction  at  the  home  she  had  provided 
for  Sidney;  and  she  even  held  out  hopes  of  some  future,  when, 
their  probation  finished  and  their  independence  secured,  she 
might  reside  with  her  sons  alternately.  These  hopes  redoubled 
Philip's  assiduity,  and  he  saved  every  shilling  of  his  weekly 
stipend ;  and  sighed  as  he  thought  that  in  another  week  his  term 
of  apprenticeship  would  commence  and  the  stipend  cease. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  01 

Mr.  Plaskwith  could  not  but  be  pleased  on  the  whole  with  the 
diligence  of  his  assistant,  but  he  was  chafed  and  irritated  by  the 
sullenness  of  his  manner.  As  for  Mrs.  Plaskwith,  poor  woman  ! 
she  positively  detested  the  taciturn  and  moody  boy,  who  never 
mingled  in  the  jokes  of  the  circle,  nor  played  with  the  children, 
nor  complimented  her,  nor  added,  in  short,  anything  to  the 
sociability  of  the  house.  Mr.  Plimmins,  who  had  at  first  sought 
to  condescend,  next  sought  to  bully;  but  the  gaunt  frame  and 
savage  eye  of  Philip  awed  the  smirk  youth,  in  spite  of  himself ; 
and  he  confessed  to  Mrs.  Plaskwith  that  he  should  not  like  to  meet 
"the  gipsy,"  alone,  on  a  dark  night;  to  which  Mrs.  Plaskwith 
replied,  as  usual,  "that  Mr.  Plimmins  always  did  say  the  best 
things  in  the  world  !  " 

One  morning,  Philip  was  sent  a  few  miles  into  the  country,  to 
assist  "in  cataloguing  some  books. in  the  library  of  Sir  Thomas 
Champerdown — that  gentleman,  who  was  a  scholar,  having 
requested  that  some  one  acquainted  with  the  Greek  character 
might  be  sent  to  him,  and  Philip  being  the  only  one  in  the  shop 
who  possessed  such  knowledge. 

It  was  evening  before  he  returned.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Plaskwith 
were  both  in  the  shop  as  he  entered ;  in  fact,  they  had  been 
employed  in  talking  him  over. 

"I  can't  abide  him  !  "  cried  Mrs.  Plaskwith.  "If  you  choose 
to  take  him  for  good,  I  shan't  have  an  easy  moment.  I'm  sure 
the  'prentice  that  cut  his  master's  throat  at  Chatham,  last  week, 
was  just  like  him." 

"Pshaw!  Mrs.  P.,"  said  the  bookseller,  taking  a  huge  pinch 
of  snuff,  as  usual,  from  his  waistcoat  pocket.  "I  myself  was 
reserved  when  I  was  young;  all  reflective  people  are.  I  may 
observe,  by  the  by,  that  it  was  the  case  with  Napoleon  Bonaparte : 
still,  however,  I  must  own  he  is  a  disagreeable  youth,  though  he 
attends  to  his  business." 

"And  how  fond  of  his  money  he  is  ! "  remarked  Mrs.  Plask- 
with;  "he  won't  buy  himself  a  new  pair  of  shoes!  quite  dis- 
graceful !  And  did  you  see  what  a  look  he  gave  Plimmins, 
when  he  joked  about  his  indifference  to  his  sole?  Plimmins 
always  does  say  such  good  things  !  " 

"He  is  shabby,  certainly,"  said  the  bookseller;  "but  the 
value  of  a  book  does  not  always  depend  on  the  binding." 

' '  I  hope  he  is  honest !  ' '  observed  Mrs.  Plaskwith ;  and  here 
Philip  entered. 

"Hum,"  said  Mr.  Plaskwith;  "you  have  had  a  long  day's 
work :  but  I  suppose  it  will  take  a  week  to  finish?" 


<)  2  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"I  am  to  go  again  to-morrow  morning,  sir:  two  days  more 
will  conclude  the  task." 

"  There's  a  letter  for  you,"  cried  Mrs.  Plaskwith  ;  "  you  owes 
me  for  it." 

"A  letter  !  "  It  was  not  his  mother's  hand;  it  was  a  strange 
writing ;  he  gasped  for  breath  as  he  broke  the  seal.  It  was  the 
letter  of  the  physician. 

His  mother  then  was  ill — dying — wanting,  perhaps,  the  neces- 
saries of  life.  She  would  have  concealed  from  him  her  illness 
and  her  poverty.  His  quick  alarm  exaggerated  the  last  into  utter 
want ;  he  uttered  a  cry  that  rang  through  the  shop,  and  rushed  to 
Mr.  Plaskwith. 

' '  Sir,  sir  !  my  mother  is  dying  ! — She  is  poor,  poor — perhaps, 
starving ;  money,  money  !  lend  me  money  !  ten  pounds  !  five  !  I 
will  work  for  you  all  my  life  for  nothing,  but  lend  me  the 
money  ! ' ' 

"Hoity-toity!"  said  Mrs.  Plaskwith,  nudging  her  husband; 
' '  I  told  you  what  would  come  of  it :  it  will  be  '  money  or  life ' 
next  time." 

Philip  did  not  heed  or  hear  this  address ;  but  stood  imme- 
diately before  the  bookseller,  his  hands  clasped — wild  impatience 
in  his  eyes.  Mr.  Plaskwith,  somewhat  stupified,  remained  silent. 

"Do  you  hear  me?  Are  you  human?"  exclaimed  Philip,  his 
emotion  revealing  at  once  all  the  fire  of  his  character.  "I  tell 
you  my  mother  is  dying ;  I  must  go  to  her  !  Shall  I  go  empty 
handed  ?  Give  me  money  !  " 

Mr.  Plaskwith  was  not  a  bad-hearted  man ;  but  he  was  a  for- 
mal man  and  an  irritable  one.  The  tone  his  shop-boy  (for  so  he 
considered  Philip)  assumed  to  him,  before  his  own  wife  too 
(examples  are  very  dangerous),  rather  exasperated  than  moved 
him. 

"  That's  not  the  way  to  speak  to  your  master ;  you  forget  your- 
self, young  man !  " 

"  Forget !  But,  sir,  if  she  has  not  necessaries — if  she  is  starv- 
ing?" 

"Fudge!"  said  Mr.  Plaskwith.  "Mr.  Morton  writes  me 
word  that  he  has  provided  for  your  mother !  Does  not  he, 
Hannah?" 

"  More  fool  he,  I'm  sure,  with  such  a  fine  family  of  his  own  ! 
Don't  look  at  me  in  that  way,  young  man ;  I  won't  take  it — that 
I  won't !  I  declare  my  blood  friz  to  see  you  !  " 

"  Will  you  advance  me  money  ?  Five  pounds — only  five  pounds, 
Mr.  Plaskwith?" 

"Not  five  shillings  !     Talk  to  me  in  this  style  ! — not  the  man 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  93 

for  it,  sir!  highly  improper.  Come,  shut  up  the  shop,  and  recol- 
lect yourself;  and,  perhaps,  when  Sir  Thomas's  library  is  done, 
I  may  let  you  go  to  town.  You  can't  go  to-morrow.  All  a  sham, 
perhaps;  eh,  Hannah?" 

"Very  likely!  Consult  Plimmins.  Better  come  away  now, 
Mr.  P.  He  looks  like  a  young  tiger." 

Mrs.  Plaskwith  quitted  the  shop  for  the  parlor.  Her  husband 
putting  his  hands  behind  his  back,  and  throwing  back  his  chin, 
was  about  to  follow  her.  Philip,  who  had  remained  for  the  last 
moment  mute  and  white  as  stone,  turned  abruptly ;  and  his  grief 
taking  rather  the  tone  of  rage  than  supplication,  he  threw  him- 
self before  his  master,  and,  laying  his  hand  on  his  shoulder, 
said  : 

4 '  I  leave  you — do  not  let  it  be  with  a  curse.  I  conjure  you, 
have  mercy  on  me  !  " 

Mr.  Plaskwith  stopped ;  and  had  Philip  then  taken  but  a  milder 
tone,  all  had  been  well.  But,  accustomed  from  childhood  to 
command ;  all  his  fierce  passions  loose  within  him ;  despising  the 
very  man  he  thus  implored — the  boy  ruined  his  own  cause. 
Indignant  at  the  silence  of  Mr.  Plaskwith,  and  too  blinded  by 
his  emotions  to  see  that  in  that  silence  there  was  relenting,  he 
suddenly  shook  the  little  man  with  a  vehemence  that  almost  over- 
set him,  and  cried : 

' '  You,  who  demand  for  five  years  my  bones  and  blood — my 
body  and  soul — a  slave  to  your  vile  trade — do  you  deny  me  bread 
for  a  mother's  lips?" 

Trembling  with  anger,  and  perhaps  fear,  Mr.  Plaskwith  extri- 
cated himself  from  the  gripe  of  Philip,  and,  hurrying  from  the 
shop,  said,  as  he  banged  the  door : 

"  Beg  my  pardon  for  this  to-night,  or  out  you  go  to-morrow, 
neck  and  crop !  Zounds !  a  pretty  pass  the  world's  come  to  !  I 
don't  believe  a  word  about  your  mother.  Baugh  !  " 

Left  alone,  Philip  remained  for  some  moments  struggling  with 
his  wrath  and  agony.  He  then  seized  his  hat,  which  he  had 
thrown  off  on  entering — pressed  it  over  his  brows — turned  to  quit 
the  shop — when  his  eye  fell  upon  the  till.  Plaskwith  had  left  it 
open,  and  the  gleam  of  the  coin  struck  his  gaze — that  deadly 
smile  of  the  arch  tempter.  Intellect,  reason,  conscience — all,  in 
that  instant,  were  confusion  and  chaos.  He  cast  a  hurried  glance 
round  the  solitary  and  darkening  room ;  plunged  his  hand  into 
the  drawer,  clutched  he  knew  not  what,  silver  or  gold,  as  it  came 
uppermost ;  and  burst  into  a  loud  and  bitter  laugh.  That  laugh 
itself  startled  him — it  did  not  sound  like  his  own.  His  face  fell, 


94  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

and  his  knees  knocked  together ;  his  hair  bristled ;  he  felt  as  if 
the  very  fiend  had  uttered  that  yell  of  joy  over  a  fallen  soul. 

"No — no — no!"  he  muttered;  "no,  my  mother — not  even 
for  thee  !  "  And,  dashing  the  money  to  the  ground,  he  fled,  like 
a  maniac,  from  the  house. 

At  a  later  hour  that  same  evening,  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  returned 
from  his  country  mansion  to  Berkeley  Square.  He  found  his  wife 
very  uneasy  and  nervous  about  the  non-appearance  of  their  only 
son.  Arthur  had  sent  home  his  groom  and  horses  about  seven 
o'clock,  with  a  hurried  scroll,  written  in  pencil  on  a  blank  page 
torn  from  his  pocket-book,  and  containing  only  these  words: 
1  "  Don't  wait  dinner  for  me — I  may  not  be  home  for  some 
hours.  I  have  met  with  a  melancholy  adventure.  You  will 
approve  what  I  have  done  when  we  meet." 

This  note  a  little  perplexed  Mr.  Beaufort ;  but  as  he  was  very 
hungry,  he  turned  a  deaf  ear  both  to  his  wife's  conjectures  and 
his  own  surmises,  till  he  had  refreshed  himself;  and  then  he  sent 
for  the  groom,  and  learned  that,  after  the  accident  to  the  blind 

man,  Mr.    Arthur  had   been  left  at  a  hosier's  in  H .     This 

seemed  to  him  extremely  mysterious ;  and,  as  hour  after  hour 
passed  away,  and  still  Arthur  came  not,  he  began  to  imbibe  his 
wife's  fears,  which  were  now  wound  up  almost  to  hysterics  ;  and 
just  at  midnight  he  ordered  his  carriage,  and  taking  with  him  the 
groom  as  a  guide,  set  off  to  the  suburban  region.  Mrs.  Beaufort 
had  wished  to  accompany  him ;  but  the  husband  observing  that 
young  men  would  be  young  men,  and  that  there  might  possibly  be 
a  lady  in  the  case,  Mrs.  Beaufort,  after  a  pause  of  thought,  passively 
agreed  that,  all  things  considered,  she  had  better  remain  at  home. 
No  lady  of  proper  decorum  likes  to  run  the  risk  of  finding  herself 
in  a  false  position.  Mr.  Beaufort  accordingly  set  out  alone.  Easy 
was  the  carriage;  swift  were  the  steeds;  and  luxuriously  the 
wealthy  man  was  whirled  along.  Not  a  suspicion  of  the  true  cause 
of  Arthur's  detention  crossed  him ;  but  he  thought  of  the  snares 
of  London — of  artful  females  in  distress;  "a  melancholy  adven- 
ture "  generally  implies  love  for  the  adventure,  and  money  for  the 
melancholy  ;  and  Arthur  was  young — generous — with  a  heart  and 
a  pocket  equally  open  to  imposition.  Such  scrapes,  however,  do 
not  terrify  a  father  when  he  is  a  man  of  the  world,  so  much  as  they 
do  an  anxious  mother ;  and,  with  more  curiosity  than  alarm,  Mr. 
Beaufort,  after  a  short  doze,  found  himself  before  the  shop  indi- 
cated. 

Notwithstanding  the  lateness  of  the  hour,  the  door  to  the  private 
entrance  was  ajar, — a  circumstance  which  seemed  very  suspicious 
to  Mr.  Beaufort.  He  pushed  it  open  with  caution  and  timidity  ; 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  95 

a  candle  placed  upon  a  chair  in  the  narrow  passage  threw  a  sickly 
light  over  the  flight  of  stairs,  till  swallowed  up  by  the  deep  shadow 
from  the  sharp  angle  made  by  the  ascent.  Robert  Beaufort  stood 
a  moment  in  some  doubt  whether  to  call,  to  knock,  to  recede,  or 
to  advance,  when  a  step  was  heard  upon  the  stairs  above ;  it  came 
nearer  and  nearer ;  a  figure  emerged  from  the  shadow  of  the  last 
landing-place,  and  Mr.  Beaufort,  to  his  great  joy,  recognized  his 
son. 

Arthur  did  not,  however,  seem  to  perceive  his  father,  and  was 
about  to  pass  him,  when  Mr.  Beaufort  laid  his  hand  on  his  arm. 

"  What  means  all  this,  Arthur?  What  place  are  you  in ?  How 
you  have  alarmed  us  !  " 

Arthur  cast  a  look  upon  his  father  of  sadness  and  reproach. 

"  Father,"  he  said,  in  atone  that  sounded  stern — almost  com- 
manding— "  I  will  show  you  where  I  have  been :  follow  me — nay, 
I  say,  follow." 

He  turned,  without  another  word  re-ascended  the  stairs ;  and 
Mr.  Beaufort,  surprised  and  awed  into  mechanical  obedience,  did 
as  his  son  desired.  At  the  landing-place  of  the  second  floor, 
another  long-wicked,  neglected,  ghastly  candle  emitted  its  cheer- 
less ray.  It  gleamed  through  the  open  door  of  a  small  bed-room 
to  the  left,  through  which  Beaufort  perceived  the  forms  of  two 
women.  One  (it  was  the  kindly  maid  servant)  was  seated  on  a 
chair,  and  weeping  bitterly ;  the  other  (it  was  a  hireling  nurse, 
in  the  first  and  last  day  of  her  attendance)  was  unpinning  her 
dingy  shawl  before  she  lay  down  to  take  a  nap.  She  turned  her 
vacant,  listless  face  upon  the  two  men,  put  on  a  doleful  smile,  and 
decently  closed  the  door. 

"Where  are  we,  I  say,  Arthur?"  repeated  Mr.  Beaufort. 
Arthur  took  his  father's  hand — drew  him  into  a  room  to  the  right 
— and  taking  up  the  candle,  placed  it  on  a  small  table  beside  a 
bed,  and  said,  "  Here,  sir — in  the  presence  of  Death  ! ' ' 

Mr.  Beaufort  cast  a  hurried  and  fearful  glance  on  the  still,  wan, 
serene  face  beneath  his  eyes,  and  recognized  in  that  glance  the 
features  of  the  neglected  and  the  once-adored  Catherine. 

"Yes — yes,  whom  your  brother  so  loved — the  mother  of  his 
children — died  in  this  squalid  room,  and  far  from  her  sons,  in 
poverty,  in  sorrow !  died  of  a  broken  heart !  Was  that  well, 
father  ?  Have  you  in  this  nothing  to  repent  ?  " 

Conscience-stricken  and  appalled,  the  worldly  man  sank  down 
on  a  seat  beside  the  bed,  and  covered  his  face  with  his  hands. 

"  Ay,"  continued  Arthur,  almost  bitterly — "  ay,  we,  his  nearest 
of  kin — we,  who  have  inherited  his  lands  and  gold — we  have 
been  thus  heedless  of  that  great  legacy  your  brother  bequeathed 


96  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

to  us:  the  things  dearest  to  him — the  woman  he  loved — the 
children  his  death  cast,  nameless  and  branded,  on  the  world.  Ay, 
weep,  father;  and  while  you  weep  think  of  the  future,  of  repara- 
tion. I  have  sworn  to  that  clay  to  befriend  her  sons  ;  join  you, 
who  have  all  the  power,  to  fulfil  the  promise — join  in  that  vow : 
and  may  Heaven  not  visit  on  us  both  the  woes  of  this  bed  of 
death  !  " 

"I  did  not  know — I — I — "  faltered  Mr.  Beaufort. 

"  But  we  should  have  known,"  interrupted  Arthur,  mournfully. 
"Ah,  my  dear  father  !  do  not  harden  your  heart  by  false  excuses. 
The  dead  still  speaks  to  you,  and  commends  to  your  care  her 
children.  My  task  here  is  done :  O  sir  !  yours  is  to  come.  I 
leave  you  alone  with  the  dead." 

So  saying,  the  young  man,  whom  the  tragedy  of  the  scene  had 
worked  into  a  passion  and  a  dignity  above  his  usual  character, 
unwilling  to  trust  himself  farther  to  his  emotions,  turned  abruptly 
from  the  room,  fled  rapidly  down  the  stairs,  and  left  the  house. 
As  the  carriage  and  liveries  of  his  father  met  his  eye,  he  groaned ; 
for  their  evidence  of  comfort  and  wealth  seemed  a  mockery  to 
the  deceased  :  he  averted  his  face  and  walked  on.  Nor  did  he 
heed  nor  even  perceive  a  form  that  at  that  instant  rushed  by  him 
— pale,  haggard,  breathless — towards  the  house  which  he  had 
quitted,  and  the  door  of  which  he  left  open,  as  he  had  found  it — 
open,  as  the  physician  had  left  it  when  hurrying,  ten  minutes 
before  the  arrival  of  Mr.  Beaufort,  from  the  spot  where  his  skill 
was  impotent.  Wrapped  in  gloomy  thought,  alone,  and  on  foot, 
at  that  dreary  hour,  and  in  that  remote  suburb,  the  heir  of  the 
Beauforts  sought  his  splendid  home.  Anxious,  fearful,  hoping, 
the  outcast  orphan  flew  on  to  the  death-room  of  his  mother. 

Mr.  Beaufort  who  had  but  imperfectly  heard  Arthur's  parting 
accents,  lost  and  bewildered  by  the  strangeness  of  his  situation, 
did  not  at  first  perceive  that  he  was  left  alone.  Surprised,  and 
chilled  by  the  sudden  silence  of  the  chamber,  he  rose,  withdrew 
his  hands  from  his  face  and  again  he  saw  that  countenance  so 
mute  and  solemn.  He  cast  his  gaze  round  the  dismal  room  for 
Arthur ;  he  called  his  name — no  answer  came ;  a  superstitious 
tremor  seized  upon  him ;  his  limbs  shook ;  he  sunk  once  more  on 
his  seat,  and  closed  his  eyes :  muttering,  for  the  first  time,  perhaps, 
since  his  childhood,  words  of  penitence  and  prayer.  He  was 
roused  from  this  bitter  self-abstraction  by  a  deep  groan.  It  seemed 
to  come  from  the  bed.  Did  his  ears  deceive  him  ?  Had  the  dead 
found  a  voice  ?  He  started  up  in  an  agony  of  dread,  and  saw 
opposite  to  him  the  livid  countenance  of  Philip  Morton ;  the  Son 
o»f  the  Corpse  Jiad  replaced!  the  Son  of  the  Living  Man !  The 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  97 

dim  and  solitary  light  fell  upon  that  countenance.  There,  all  the 
bloom  and  freshness  natural  to  youth  seemed  blasted  !  There,  on 
those  wasted  features,  played  all  the  terrible  power  and  glare  of 
precocious  passions, — rage,  woe,  scorn,  despair.  Terrible  is  it 
to  see  upon  the  face  of  a  boy  the  storm  and  whirlwind  that  should 
visit  only  the  strong  heart  of  a  man  ! 

"  She  is  dead  ! — dead  !  and  in  your  presence !  "  shouted  Philip, 
with  his  wild  eyes  fixed  upon  the  cowering  uncle  ;  "dead  with 
care,  perhaps  with  famine.  And  you  have  come  to  look  upon 
your  work  !  " 

"Indeed,"  said  Beaufort,  deprecatingly,  "I  have  but  just 
arrived  :  I  did  not  know  she  had  been  ill,  or  in  want,  upon  my 
honor.  This  is  all  a — a — mistake :  I — I — came  in  search  of — of 
— another — " 

"  You  did  not,  then,  come  to  relieve  her?  "  said  Philip,  very 
calmly.  "  You  had  not  learned  her  suffering  and  distress,  and 
flown  hither  in  the  hope  that  there  was  yet  time  to  save  her  ?  You 
did  not  do  this?  Ha  !  ha  ! — why  did  I  think  it?  " 

"Did  any  one  call,  gentlemen ?"  said  a  whining  voice  at  the 
door ;  and  the  nurse  put  in  her  head. 

"Yes — yes — you  may  come  in,"  said  Beaufort,  shaking  with 
nameless  and  cowardly  apprehension ;  but  Philip  had  flown  to  the 
door,  and,  gazing  on  the  nurse,  said, 

"She  is  a  stranger! — see,  a  stranger!  The  son  now  has 
assumed  his  post.  Begone,  woman  !  "  And  he  pushed  her  away, 
and  drew  the  bolt  across  the  door. 

And  then  there  looked  upon  him,  as  there  had  looked  upon  his 
reluctant  companion,  calm  and  holy,  the  face  of  the  peaceful 
corpse.  He  burst  into  tears,  and  fell  on  his  knees  so  close  to 
Beaufort  that  he  touched  him  ;  he  took  up  the  heavy  hand,  and 
covered  it  with  burning  kisses. 

"  Mother !  mother  !  do  not  leave  me !  wake,  smile  once  more  on 
your  son  !  I  would  have  brought  you  money,  but  I  could  not  have 
asked  for  your  blessing,  then  ;  mother,  I  ask  it  now  !  " 

"  If  I  had  but  known — if  you  had  but  written  to  me,  my  dear 
;  young  gentleman — but  my  offers  had  been  refused,  and — " 

"  Offers  of  a  hireling's  pittance  to  her ;  to  her  for  whom  my 
father  would  have  coined  his  heart's  blood  into  gold  !  My  father's 
wife  ! — his  wife ! — offers — " 

He  rose  suddenly,  folded  his  arms,  and,  facing  Beaufort,  with 
a  fierce  determined  brow,  said  : 

"Mark  me,  you  hold  the  wealth  that  I  was  trained  from  my 
cradle  to  consider  my  heritage.  I  have  worked  with  these  hands 
for  bread,  and  never  complained,  except  to  my  own  heart  and 


98  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

soul.  I  never  hated,  and  never  cursed  you — robber  as  you  were 
— yes,  robber !  For,  even  were  there  no  marriage  save  in  the 
sight  of  God,  neither  my  father,  nor  Nature,  nor  Heaven,  meant 
that  you  should  seize  all,  and  that  there  should  be  nothing  due  to 
the  claims  of  affection  and  blood.  He  was  not  the  less  my  father 
even  if  the  Church  spoke  not  on  my  side.  Despoiler  of  the 
orphan,  and  derider  of  human  love,  you  are  not  the  less  a  robber, 
though  the  law  fences  you  round,  and  men  call  you  honest !  But 
I  did  not  hate  you  for  this.  Now,  in  the  presence  of  my  dead 
mother — dead,  far  from  both  her  sons — now  I  abhor  and  curse 
you.  You  may  think  yourself  safe  when  you  quit  this  room — 
safe,  and  from  my  hatred  ;  you  may  be  so :  but  do  not  deceive 
yourself,  the  curse  of  the  widow  and  the  orphan  shall  pursue — it 
shall  cling  to  you  and  yours ;  it  shall  gnaw  your  heart  in  the  midst 
of  splendor ;  it  shall  cleave  to  the  heritage  of  your  son  !  There 
shall  be  a  death-bed  yet,  beside  which  you  shall  see  the  spectre 
of  her,  now  so  calm,  rising  for  retribution  from  the  grave !  These 
words — no,  you  never  shall  forget  them ;  years  hence  they  shall 
ring  in  your  ears,  and  freeze  the  marrow  of  your  bones  !  And 
now  begone,  my  father's  brother  !  begone  from  my  mother's 
corpse  to  your  luxurious  home !  ' ' 

He  opened  the  door,  and  pointed  to  the  stairs.  Beaufort,  with- 
out a  word,  turned  from  the  room  and  departed.  He  heard  the 
door  closed  and  locked  as  he  descended  the  stairs  •  but  he  did  not 
hear  the  deep  groans  and  vehement  sobs  in  which  the  desolate 
orphan  gave  vent  to  the  anguish  which  succeeded  to>  the  less 
sacred  paroxysm  of  revenge  and  wrath. 

BOOK  II. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"  Jncubo.  Look  to  the  cavalier.     What  ails  he  ? 
****** 

Hostess.  And  in  such  good  clothes,  too !  " 

BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  ;  Love's  Pilgrimage. 
"  Theod.  I  have  a  brother — there  my  last  hope ! 

Thus  as  you  find  me,  without  fear  or  wisdom, 
I  now  am  only  child  of  Hope  and  Danger." — Ibid. 

THE  time  employed  by  Mr.  Beaufort  in  reaching  his  home  was 
haunted  by  gloomy  and  confused  terrors.  He  felt  inexplicably 
fts  if  the  denunciations  of  Philip  were  to  visit  less  himself 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  99 

his  son.  He  trembled  at  the  thought  of  Arthur  meeting  this 
strange,  wild,  exasperated  scatterling — perhaps  on  the  morrow — 
in  the  very  height  of  his  passions.  And  yet,  after  the  scene 
between  Arthur  and  himself,  he  saw  cause  to  fear  that  he  might 
not  be  able  to  exercise  a  sufficient  authority  over  his  son,  how- 
ever naturally  facile  and  obedient,  to  prevent  his  return  to  the 
house  of  death.  In  this  dilemma  he  resolved,  as  is  usual  with 
cleverer  men,  even  when  yoked  to  yet  feebler  helpmates,  to  hear 
if  his  wife  had  anything  comforting  or  sensible  to  say  upon  the 
subject.  Accordingly,  on  reaching  Berkeley  Square,  he  went 
straight  to  Mrs.  Beaufort ;  and  having  relieved  her  mind  as  to 
Arthur's  safety,  related  the  scene  in  which  he  had  been  so  unwill- 
ing an  actor.  With  that  more  lively  susceptibility  which  belongs 
to  most  women,  however  comparatively  unfeeling,  Mrs.  Beaufort 
made  greater  allowance  than  her  husband  for  the  excitement 
Philip  had  betrayed.  Still  Beaufort's  description  of  the  dark 
menaces,  the  fierce  countenance,  the  brigand-like  form,  of  the 
bereaved  son,  gave  her  very  considerable  apprehensions  for  Arthur, 
should  the  young  men  meet ;  and  she  willingly  coincided  with 
her  husband  in  the  propriety  of  using  all  means  of  parental  per- 
suasion or  command  to  guard  against  such  an  encounter.  But, 
in  the  mean  while,  Arthur  returned  not,  and  new  fears  seized  the 
anxious  parents.  He  had  gone  forth  alone,  in  a  remote  suburb  of 
the  metropolis,  at  a  late  hour,  himself  under  strong  excitement. 
He  might  have  returned  to  the  house,  or  have  lost  his  way  amidst 
some  dark  haunts  of  violence  and  crime ;  they  knew  not  where 
to  send,  or  what  to  suggest.  Day  already  began  to  dawn,  and 
still  he  came  not.  At  length,  towards  five  o'clock,  a  loud  rap 
was  heard  at  the  door,  and  Mr.  Beaufort,  hearing  some  bustle  in 
the  hall,  descended.  He  saw  his  son  borne  into  the  hall  from  a 
hackney-coach  by  two  strangers,  pale,  bleeding,  and  apparently 
insensible.  His  first  thought  was  that  he  had  been  murdered  by 
Philip.  He  uttered  a  feeble  cry,  and  sank  down  beside  his  son. 

"  Don't  be  darnted,  sir,"  said  one  of  the  strangers,  who  seemed 
an  artisan;  "I  don't  think  he  be  much  hurt.  You  sees  he  was 
crossing  the  street,  and  the  coach  ran  against  him ;  but  it  did  not 
go  over  his  head ;  it  be  only  the  stones  that  makes  him  bleed  so  : 
and  that's  a  mercy." 

"A  providence,  sir,"  said  the  other  man;  "  but  Providence 
watches  over  us  all,  night  and  day,  sleep  or  wake.  Hem  !  We 
were  passing  at  the  time  from  the  meeting — the  Odd  Fellows,  sir 
— and  so  we  took  him,  and  got  him  a  coach  ;  for  we  found  his 
«-.-ir<i  in  his  pocket,  He  could  not  speak  just  then ;  but  the  rat- 


ICO  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

tling  of  the  coach  did  him  a  deal  of  good,  for  he  groaned — my 
eyes  !  how  he  groaned  ! — did  not  he,  Burrows?  " 

"  It  did  one's  heart  good  to  hear  him." 

' '  Run  for  Astley  Cooper — you — go  to  Brodie.  Good  Heavens  ! 
he  is  dying.  Be  quick — quick  !  "  cried  Mr.  Beaufort  to  his  ser- 
vants, while  Mrs.  Beaufort,  who  had  now  gained  the  spot,  with 
greater  presence  of  mind  had  Arthur  conveyed  into  a  room. 

"It  is  a  judgment  upon  me,"  groaned  Beaufort,  rooted  to  the 
stone  of  his  hall,  and  left  alone  with  the  strangers. 

"No,  sir,  it  is  not  a  judgment,  it  is  a  providence ',"  said  the 
more  sanctimonious  and  better  dressed  of  the  two  men:  "for, 
put  the  question,  if  it  had  been  a  judgment,  the  wheel  would 
have  gone  over  him ;  but  it  didn't ;  and,  whether  he  dies  or  not, 
I  shall  always  say  that  if  that's  not  a  providence,  I  don't  know 
what  is.  We  have  come  a  long  way,  sir ;  and  Burrows  is  a  poor 
man,  though  I'm  well  to  do." 

This  hint  for  money  restored  Beaufort  to  his  recollection ;  he 
put  his  purse  into  the  nearest  hand  outstretched  to  clutch  it,  and 
muttered  forth  something  like  thanks. 

' '  Sir,  may  the  Lord  bless  you  !  and  I  hope  the  young  gentle- 
man will  do  well.  I  am  sure  you  have  cause  to  be  thankful  that 
he'was  within  an  inch  of  the  wheel ;  was  not  he,  Burrows  ?  Well, 
it's  enough  to  convert  a  heathen.  But  the  ways  of  Providence 
are  mysterious,  and  that's  the  truth  of  it.  Good-night,  sir." 

Certainly  it  did  seem  as  if  the  curse  of  Philip  was  already  at 
its  work.  An  accident  almost  similar  to  that  which,  in  the 
adventure  of  the  blind  man,  had  led  Arthur  himself  to  the  clue  of 
Catherine,  within  twenty-four  hours  stretched  Arthur  himself 
upon  his  bed.  The  sorrow  Mr.  Beaufort  had  not  relieved,  was 
now  at  his  own  hearth.  But  there,  were  parents  and  nurses,  and 
great  physicians  and  skilful  surgeons,  and  all  the  army  that  com- 
bine against  Death, — and  there,  were  ease,  and  luxury,  and  kind 
eyes,  and  pitying  looks,  and  all  that  can  take  the  sting  from  pain. 
And  thus,  the  very  night  on  which  Catherine  had  died,  broken 
down,  and  worn-out,  upon  a  strange  breast,  with  a  feeless  doctor, 
and  by  the  ray  of  a  single  candle,  the  heir  to  the  fortunes  once 
destined  to  her  son  wrestled  also  with  the  grim  Tyrant,  who 
seemed,  however,  scared  from  his  prey  by  the  arts  and  luxuries 
which  the  world  of  rich  men  raises  up  in  defiance  of  the  grave. 

Arthur  was,  indeed,  very  seriously  injured  ;  one  of  his  ribs  was 
broken,  and  he  had  received  two  severe  contusions  on  the  head. 
To  insensibility  succeeded  fever,  followed  by  delirium.  He  was 
in  imminent  danger  for  several  days.  If  anything  could  console 
his  parents  for.  such  an  affliction,  it  was  the  thought  that,  at  least, 


NIGHT   AXD    MORNING.  1OI 

he  was  saved  from  the  chance  of  meeting  Philip.  Mr.  Beaufort, 
in  the  instinct  of  that  capricious  and  fluctuating  conscience  which 
belongs  to  weak  minds,  which  remains  still,  and  drooping,  and 
lifeless,  as  a  flag  on  a  mast-head  during  the  calm  of  prosperity, 
but  flutters,  and  flaps,  and  tosses  when  the  wind  blows  and  the 
wave  heaves,  thought  very  acutely  and  remorsefully  of  the  condi- 
tion of  the  Mortons,  during  the  danger  of  his  own  son.  So  far, 
indeed,  from  his  anxiety  for  Arthur  monopolizing  all  his  care,  it 
only  sharpened  his  charity  towards  the  orphans ;  for  many  a  man 
becomes  devout  and  good  when  he  fancies  he  has  an  immediate 
interest  in  appeasing  Providence.  The  morning  after  Arthur's 
accident,  he  sent  for  Mr.  Blackwell.  He  commissioned  him  to 
see  that  Catherine's  funeral  rites  were  performed  with  all  due  care 
and  attention  ;  he  bade  him  obtain  an  interview  with  Philip,  and 
assure  the  youth  of  Mr.  Beaufort's  good  and  friendly  disposition 
towards  him,  and  to  offer  to  forward  his  views  in  any  course  of 
education  he  might  prefer,  or  any  profession  he  might  adopt ; 
and  he  earnestly  counselled  the  lawyer  to  employ  all  his  tact  and 
delicacy  in  conferring  with  one  of  so  proud  and  fiery  a  temper. 
Mr.  Blackwell,  however,  had  no  tact  or  delicacy  to  employ  :  he 
went  to  the  house  of  mourning,  forced  his  way  to  Philip,  and  the 
very  exordium  of  his  harangue,  which  was  devoted  to  praises  of 
the  extraordinary  generosity  and  benevolence  of  his  employer, 
mingled  with  condescending  admonitions  towards  gratitude  from 
Philip,  so  exasperated  the  boy,  that  Mr.  Blackwell  was  extremely 
glad  to  get  out  of  the  house  with  a  whole  skin.  He,  however, 
did  not  neglect  the  more  formal  part  of  his  mission ;  but  com- 
municated immediately  with  a  fashionable  undertaker,  and  gave 
orders  for  a  very  genteel  funeral.  He  thought  after  the  funeral 
that  Philip  would  be  in  a  less  excited  state  of  mind,  and  more 
likely  to  hear  reason ;  he,  therefore,  deferred  a  second  interview 
with  the  orphan  till  after  that  event ;  and,  in  the  mean  while, 
despatched  a  letter  to  Mr.  Beaufort,  stating  that  he  had  attended 
to  his  instructions ;  that  the  orders  for  the  funeral  were  given ; 
but  that  at  present  Mr.  Philip  Morton's  mind  was  a  little  disor- 
dered, and  that  he  could  not  calmly  discuss  the  plans  for  the 
future  suggested  by  Mr.  Beaufort.  He  did  not  doubt,  however, 
that  in  another  interview  all  would  be  arranged  according  to  the 
wishes  his  client  had  so  nobly  conveyed  to  him.  Mr.  Beaufort's 
conscience  on  this  point  was  therefore  set  at  rest. 

It  was  a  dull,  close,  oppressive  morning,  upon  which  the 
remains  of  Catherine  Morton  were  consigned  to  the  grave.  With 
the  preparations  for  the  funeral  Philip  did  not  interfere ;  he  did 
not  inquire  by  whose  orders  all  that  solemnity  of  routes,  and 


102  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

coaches,  and  black  plumes,  and  crape-bands,  was  appointed.  If 
his  vague  and  undeveloped  conjecture  ascribed  this  last  and  vain 
attention  to  Robert  Beaufort,  it  neither  lessened  the  sullen  resent- 
ment he  felt  against  his  uncle,  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  did  he  con- 
ceive that  he  had  a  right  to  forbid  respect  to  the  dead,  though 
he  might  reject  service  for  the  survivor.  Since  Mr.  Blackwell's 
visit,  he  had  remained  in  a  sort  of  apathy  or  torpor  which  seemed 
to  the  people  of  the  house  to  partake  rather  of  indifference  than 
woe. 

The  funeral  was  over ;  and  Philip  had  returned  to  the  apart- 
ments occupied  by  the  deceased  ;  and  now,  for  the  first  time,  he 
set  himself  to  examine  what  papers,  etc.,  she  had  left  behind. 
In  an  old  escritoire,  he  found,  first,  various  packets  of  letters  in 
his  father's  handwriting,  the  characters  in  many  of  them  faded  by 
time.  He  opened  a  few ;  they  were  the  earliest  love-letters.  He 
did  not  dare  to  read  above  a  few  lines ;  so  much  did  their  living 
tenderness  and  breathing,  frank,  hearty  passion,  contrast  with  the 
fate  of  the  adored  one.  In  those  letters,  the  very  heart  of  the 
writer  seemed  to  beat !  Now  both  hearts  alike  were  stilled  !  And 
GHOST  called  vainly  unto  GHOST  ! 

He  came,  at  length,  to  a  letter  in  his  mother's  hand,  addressed 
to  himself,  and  dated  two  days  before  her  death.  He  went  to  the 
window  and  gasped  in  the  mists  of  the  sultry  air  for  breath. 
Below,  were  heard  the  noises  of  London ;  the  shrill  cries  of  itin- 
erant venders,  the  rolling  carts,  the  whoop  of  boys  returned  for  a 
while  from  school ;  amidst  all  these  rose  one  loud,  merry  peal  of 
laughter,  which  drew  his  attention  mechanically  to  the  spot 
whence  it  came ;  it  was  at  the  threshold  of  a  public-house,  before 
which  stood  the  hearse  that  had  conveyed  his  mother's  coffin,  and 
the  gay  undertakers,  halting  there  to  refresh  themselves.  He 
closed  the  window  with  a  groan,  retired  to  the  farthest  corner  of 
the  room,  and  read  as  follows : 

"Mv  DEAREST  PHILIP, — When  you  read  this,  I  shall  be  no 
more.  You  and  poor  Sidney  will  have  neither  father  nor  mother, 
nor  fortune,  nor  name.  Heaven  is  more  just  than  man,  and  in 
Heaven  is  my  hope  for  you.  You,  Philip,  are  already  past  child- 
hood ;  your  nature  is  one  formed,  I  think,  to  wrestle  successfully 
with  the  world.  Guard  against  your  own  passions,  and  you  may 
bid  defiance  to  the  obstacles  that  will  beset  your  path  in  life. 
And  lately,  in  our  reverses,  Philip,  you  have  so  subdued  those 
passions,  so  schooled  the  pride  and  impetuosity  of  your  child- 
hood, that  I  have  contemplated  your  prospects  with  less  fear  than 
J  used  tP  do,  even  when  they  seemed  so  brilliant,  Forgive  me. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  103 

my  dear  child,  if  I  have  concealed  from  you  my  state  of  health, 
and  if  my  death  be  a  sudden  and  unlooked-for  shock.  Do  not 
grieve  for  me  too  long.  For  myself,  my  release  is  indeed  escape 
from  the  prison-house  and  the  chain — from  bodily  pain  and  men- 
tal torture,  which  may,  I  fondly  hope,  prove  some  expiation  for 
the  errors  of  a  happier  time.  For  I  did  err,  when,  even  from  the 
least  selfish  motives,  I  suffered  my  union  with  your  father  to  remain 
concealed,  and  thus  ruined  the  hopes  of  those  who  had  rights 
upon  me  equal  to  his.  But,  O  Philip  !  beware  of  the  first  false 
steps  into  deceit ;  beware,  too,  of  the  passions,  which  do  not 
betray  their  fruit  till  years  and  years  after  the  leaves  that  look  so 
green  and  the  blossoms  that  seem  so  fair. 

' '  I  repeat  my  solemn  injunction  :  Do  not  grieve  for  me  ;  but 
strengthen  your  mind  and  heart  to  receive  the  charge  that  I  now 
confide  to  you — my  Sidney,  my  child,  your  brother  !  He  is  so 
soft,  so  gentle ;  he  has  been  so  dependent  for  very  life  upon 
me,  and  we  are  parted  now  for  the  first  and  last  time.  He  is  with 
strangers  ;  and — and — O  Philip,  Philip  !  watch  over  him  for  the 
love  you  bear,  not  only  to  him,  but  to  me  !  Be  to  him  a  father  as 
well  as  a  brother.  Put  your  stout  heart  against  the  world,  so  that 
you  may  screen  him,  the  weak  child,  from  its  malice.  He  has 
not  your  talents  nor  strength  of  character ;  without  you  he  is  noth- 
ing. Live,  toil,  rise  for  his  sake  not  less  than  your  own.  If  you 
knew  how  this  heart  beats  as  I  write  to  you,  if  you  could  conceive 
what  comfort  I  take  for  him  from  my  confidence  in  you,  you  would 
feel  a  new  spirit — my  spirit — my  mother-spirit  of  love,  and  fore- 
thought, and  vigilance,  enter  into  you  while  you  read.  See  him 
when  I  am  gone ;  comfort  and  soothe  him.  Happily  he  is  too 
young  yet  to  know  all  his  loss ;  and  do  not  let  him  think  unkindly 
of  me  in  the  days  to  come,  for  he  is  a  child  now,  and  they  may 
poison  his  mind  against  me  more  easily  than  they  can  yours. 
Think,  if  he  is  unhappy  hereafter,  he  may  forget  how  I  loved  him, 
he  may  curse  those  who  gave  him  birth.  Forgive  me  all  this, 
Philip,  my  son,  and  heed  it  well. 

' '  And  now,  where  you  find  this  letter,  you  will  see  a  key  ;  it 
opens  a  well  in  the  bureau  in  which  I  have  hoarded  my  little  sav- 
ings. You  will  see  that  I  have  not  died  in  poverty.  Take  what 
there  is,  young  as  you  are  you  may  want  it  more  now  than  here- 
after. But  hold  it  in  trust  for  your  brother  as  well  as  yourself. 
If  he  is  harshly  treated  (and  you  will  go  and  see  him,  and  you 
will  remember  that  he  would  writhe  under  what  you  might  scarcely 
feel),  or  if  they  overtask  him  (he  is  so  young  to  work  yet),  it  may 
find  him  a  home  near  you.  God  watch  over  and  guard  you  both  ! 


104  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

You  are  orphans  now.     But  HE  has  told  even  the  orphans  to  call 

him  '  Father!  '  " 

When  he  had  read  this  letter,  Philip  Morton  fell  upon  his  knees, 
and  prayed. 

CHAPTER  II. 

"  His  curse  !     Dost  comprehend  what  that  word  means  ? 
Shot  from  a  father's  angry  breath." — JAMES  SHIRLEY:.  The  Brothers. 

"This  term  is  fatal,  and  affrights  me." — Ibid. 

"  Those  fond  philosophers  that  magnify 
Our  human  nature         *         *         * 
Conversed  but  little  with  the  world — they  knew  not 
The  fierce  vexation  of  community  /" — Ibid. 

AFTER  he  had  recovered  his  self-possession,  Philip  opened  the 
well  of  the  bureau,  and  was  astonished  and  affected  to  find  that 
Catherine  had  saved  more  than  ^100.  Alas  !  how  much  must 
she  have  pinched  herself  to  have  hoarded  this  little  treasure  ! 
After  burning  his  father's  love-letters,  and  some  other  papers, 
which  he  deemed  useless,  he  made  up  a  little  bundle  of  those 
trifling  effects  belonging  to  the  deceased,  which  he  valued  as 
memorials  and  relics  of  her,  quitted  the  apartment,  and  descended 
to  the  parlor  behind  the  shop.  On  the  way  he  met  with  the  kind 
servant,  and  recalling  the  grief  that  she  had  manifested  for  his 
mother  since  he  had  been  in  the  house,  he  placed  two  sovereigns 
in  her  hand.  "And  now,"  said  he,  as  the  servant  wept  while  he 
spoke, — "  now  I  can  bear  to  ask  yot:  what  I  have  not  before  done. 
How  did  my  poor  mother  die  ?  Did  she  suffer  much  ? — or — 
or—" 

"  She  went  off  like  a  lamb,  sir,"  said  the  girl,  drying  her  eyes. 
' '  You  see  the  gentleman  had  been  with  her  all  the  day,  and  she 
was  much  more  easy  and  comfortable  in  her  mind  after  he  came." 

"  The  gentleman  !     Not  the  gentleman  I  found  here?  " 

"Oh,  dear  no!  Not  the  pale,  middle-aged  gentleman  nurse 
and  I  saw  go  down,  as  the  clock  struck  two.  But  the  young, 
soft-spoken  gentleman  who  came  in  the  morning,  and  said  as  how 
he  was  a  relation.  He  stayed  with  her  till  she  slept ;  and,  when 
she  woke,  she  smiled  in  his  face — I  shall  never  forget  that  smile 
— for  I  was  standing  on  the  other  side,  as  it  might  be  here,  and 
the  doctor  was  by  the  window,  pouring  out  the  doctor's  stuff  in 
the  glass;  and  so  she  looked  on  the  young  gentleman,  and  then 
looked  round  at  us  all,  and  shook  her  head  very  gently,  but  did 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  10$ 

not  speak.  And  the  gentleman  asked  her  how  she  felt,  and  she 
took  both  his  hands  and  kissed  them  ;  and  then  he  put  his  arms 
round  and  raised  her  up,  to  take  the  physic  like,  and  she  said 
then,  'You  will  never  forget  them?'  and  he  said,  'Never.' — I 
don't  know  what  that  meant,  sir  !  " 

"  Well,  well — go  on." 

' '  And  her  head  fell  back  on  his  buzzom,  and  she  looked  so 
happy;  and,  when  the  doctor  came  to  the  bedside, — she  was 
quite  gone." 

"And  the  stranger  had  my  post!  No  matter;  God  bless 
him  !  God  bless  him  !  Who  was  he  ?  what  was  his  name  ? ' ' 

"I  don't  know,  sir;  he  did  not  say.  He  stayed  after  the 
doctor  went,  and  cried  very  bitterly ;  he  took  on  more  than  you 
did,  sir." 

"Ay." 

' '  And  the  other  gentleman  came  just  as  he  was  a-going,  and 
they  did  not  seem  to  like  each  other ;  for  I  heard  him  through 
the  wall,  as  nurse  and  I  were  in  the  next  room,  speak  as  if  he 
was  scolding;  but  he  did  not  stay  long." 

"  And  has  never  been  seen  since  ?  " 

' '  No,  sir  !  Perhaps  missus  can  tell  you  more  about  him.  But 
won't  you  take  something,  sir?  Do — you  look  so  pale." 

Philip,  without  speaking,  pushed  her  gently  aside,  and  went 
slowly  down  stairs.  He  entered  the  parlor,  where  two  or  three 
children  were  seated,  playing  at  dominoes ;  he  despatched  one 
for  their  mother,  the  mistress  of  the  shop,  who  came  in,  and 
dropped  him  a  courtesy,  with  a  very  grave,  sad  face,  as  was  proper. 

"I  am  going  to  leave  your  house,  ma'am;  and  I  wish  to  set- 
tle any  little  arrears  of  rent,  etc." 

"  Oh,  sir  !  don't  mention  it,"  said  the  landlady;  and,  as  she 
spoke,  she  took  a  piece  of  paper  from  her  bosom,  very  neatly 
folded,  and  laid  it  on  the  table.  "And  here,  sir,"  she  added, 
taking  from  the  same  depository  a  card,  "  here  is  the  card  left  by 
the  gentleman  who  saw  to  the  funeral.  He  called  half  an  hour  ago 
and  bade  me  say,  with  his  compliments,  that  he  would  wait  on 
you  to-morrow  at  eleven  o'clock.  So  I  hope  you  won't  go  yet : 
for  I  think  he  means  to  settle  everything  for  you ;  he  said  as 
much,  sir." 

Philip  glanced  over  the  card,  and  read,  "Mr.  George  Black- 
v/ell,  Lincoln's  Inn."  His  brow  grew  dark;  he  let  the  card  fall 
on  the  ground,  put  his  foot  on  it  with  a  quiet  scorn,  and  muttered 
to  himself,  "  The  lawyer  shall  not  bribe  me  out  of  my  curse  !  " 
He  turned  to  the  total  of  the  bill — not  heavy,  for  poor  Catherine 
had  regularly  defrayed  the  expense  of  her  scanty  maintenance  and 


106  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

humble  lodging  ;  paid  the  money,  and,  as  the  landlady  wrote  the 
receipt,  he  asked,  "  Who  was  the  gentleman — the  younger  gen- 
tleman— who  called  in  the  morning  of  the  day  my  mother  died  ?  ' ' 

"  Oh,  sir  !  I  am  so  sorry  I  did  not  get  his  name.  Mr.  Perkins 
said  that  he  was  some  relation.  Very  odd  he  has  never  been 
since.  But  he'll  be  sure  to  call  again,  sir;  you  had  much  better 
stay  here." 

"  No :  it  does  not  signify.  All  that  he  could  do  is  done.  But 
stay,  give  him  this  note,  if  he  should  call." 

Philip,  taking  the  pen  from  the  landlady's  hand,  hastily  wrote 
(while  Mrs.  Lacy  went  to  bring  him  sealing-wax  and  a  light)  these 
words : 

"  I  cannot  guess  who  you  are  :  they  say  that  you  call  yourself 
a  relation ;  .that  must  be  some  mistake.  I  knew  not  that  my  poor 
mother  had  relations  so  kind.  But,  whoever  you  be,  you  soothed 
her  last  hours — she  died  in  your  arms ;  and  if  ever — years,  long 
years  hence — we  should  chance  to  meet,  and  I  can  do  anything  to 
aid  another,  my  blood,  and  my  life,  and  my  heart,  and  my  soul, 
all  are  slaves  to  your  will.  If  you  be  really  of  her  kindred,  I 

commend  to  you  my  brother;  he  is  at  • ,  with  Mr.  Morton. 

If  you  can  serve  him,  my  mother's  soul  will  watch  over  you  as  a 
guardian  angel.  As  for  me,  I  ask  no  help  from  anyone:  I  go 
into  the  world  and  will  carve  out  my  own  way.  So  much  do  I 
shrink  from  the  thought  of  charity  from  others,  that  I  do  not  be- 
lieve I  could  bless  you  as  I  do  now  if  your  kindness  to  me  did  not 
close  with  the  stone  upon  my  mother's  grave. 

"PHILIP." 

He  sealed  this  letter,  and  gave  it  to  the  woman. 

"  Oh,  by  the  by,"  said  she,  "  I  had  forgot;  the  Doctor  said 
that  if  you  would  send  for  him,  he  would  be  most  happy  to  call 
on  you,  and  give  you  any  advice." 

"Very  well." 

"  And  what  shall  I  say  to  Mr.  Blackwell?" 

' '  That  he  may  tell  his  employer  to  remember  our  last  inter- 
view." 

With  that,  Philip  took  up  his  bundle  and  strode  from  the  house. 
He  went  first  to  the  churchyard,  where  his  mother's  remains  had 
been  that  day  interred.  It  was  near  at  hand,  a  quiet,  almost  a 
rural,  spot.  The  gate  stood  ajar,  for  there  was  a  public  path 
through  the  churchyard,  and  Philip  entered  with  a  noiseless  tread. 
It  was  then  near  evening ;  the  sun  had  broken  out  from  the  mists 
of  the  earlier  day,  and  the  westering  rays  shone  bright  and  holy 
upon  the  solemn  place. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  1 07 

"Mother!  mother!  "  sobbed  the  orphan,  as  he  fell  prostrate 
before  that  fresh  green  mound  :  ' '  here — here  I  have  come  to  re- 
peat my  oath,  to  swear  again  that  I  will  be  faithful  to  the  charge 
you  have  intrusted  to  your  wretched  son  !  And  at  this  hour  I 
dare  ask  if  there  be  on  this  earth  one  more  miserable  and  forlorn?  " 
As  words  to  this  effect  struggled  from  his  lips,  a  loud,  shrill 
voice — the  cracked,  painful  voice  of  weak  age  wrestling  with 
strong  passion,  rose  close  at  hand. 

' '  Away,  reprobate  !  thou  art  accursed  ! ' ' 
Philip  started,  and  shuddered  as  if  the  words  were  addressed 
to  himself,  and  from  the  grave.  But,  as  he  rose  on  his  knee,  and 
tossing  the  wild  hair  from  his  eyes,  looked  confusedly  round,  he 
saw,  at  a  short  distance,  and  in  the  shadow  of  the  wall,  two  forms ; 
the  one,  an  old  man  with  gray  hair,  who  was  seated  on  a  crum- 
bling wooden  tomb,  facing  the  setting  sun ;  the  other,  a  man  ap- 
parently yet  in  the  vigor  of  life,  who  appeared  bent  as  in  humble 
supplication.  The  old  man's  hands  were  out-stretched  over  the 
head  of  the  younger,  as  if  suiting  -terrible  action  to  the  terrible 
words,  and,  after  a  moment's  pause — a  moment,  but  it  seemed 
far  longer  to  Philip — there  was  heard  a  deep,  wild,  ghastly  howl 
from  a  dog  that  cowered  at  the  old  man's  feet ;  a  howl,  perhaps, 
of  fear  at  the  passion  of  his  master,  which  the  animal  might  asso- 
ciate with  danger. 

"  Father  !  father  !  "  said  the  supplicant,  reproachfully,  "  your 
very  dog  rebukes  your  curse. ' ' 

"  Be  dumb  !  My  dog  !  What  hast  thou  left  me  on  earth  but 
him  ?  Thou  hast  made  me  loathe  the  sight  of  friends,  for  thou 
hast  made  me  loathe  mine  own  name.  Thou  hast  covered  it  with 
disgrace;  thou  hast  turned  mine  old  age  into  a  by-word;  thy 
crimes  leave  me  solitary  in  the  midst  of  my  shame !  " 

"It  is  many  years  since  we  met,  father;  we  may  never  meet 
again.  Shall  we  part  thus  ?  " 

"  Thus,  aha  !  "  said  the  old  man,  in  a  tone  of  withering  sar- 
casm :  "I  comprehend, — you  are  come  for  money  !  " 

At  this  taunt  the  son  started  as  if  stung  by  a  serpent ;  raised 
his  head  to  its  full  height,  folded  his  arms,  and  replied  : 

' '  Sir,  you  wrong  me :  for  more  than  twenty  years  I  have  main- 
tained myself — no  matter  how,  but  without  taxing  you — and  now, 
I  felt  remorse  for  having  suffered  you  to  discard  me,  — now,  when 
you  are  old  and  helpless,  and,  I  heard,  blind :  and  you  might 
want  aid,  even  from  your  poor,  good-for-nothing  son.  But  I  have 
done.  Forget — not  my  sins,  but  this  interview.  Repeal  your 
curse,  father,  I  have  enough  on  my  head  without  yours ;  and  so 
— let  the  son  at  least  bless  the  father  who  curses  him.  Farewell !" 


Io8  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

The  speaker  turned  as  he  thus  said,  with  a  voice  that  trembled 
at  the  close,  and  brushed  rapidly  by  Philip,  whom  he  did  not, 
however,  appear  to  perceive ;  but  Philip,  by  the  last  red  beam  of 
the  sun,  saw  again  that  marked  storm-beaten  face  which  it  was 
difficult,  once  seen,  to  forget,  and  recognized  the  stranger,  on 
whose  breast  he  had  slept  the  night  of  his  fatal  visit  to  R . 

The  old  man's  imperfect  vision  did  not  detect  the  departure  of 
his  son,  but  his  face  changed  and  softened  as  the  latter  strode 
silently  through  the  rank  grass. 

"  William  !"  he  said  at  last,  gently;  "William!"  and  the 
tears  rolled  down  his  furrowed  cheeks ;  ' '  my  son  ! ' '  but  that  son 
was  gone  ;  the  old  man  listened  for  reply — none  came.  ' '  He 
has  left  me — poor  William  !  we  shall  never  meet  again  "  ;  and  he 
sank  once  more  on  the  old  tombstone,  dumb,  rigid,  motionless — 
an  image  of  Time  himself  in  his  own  domain  of  Graves.  The 
dog  crept  closer  to  his  master,  and  licked  his  hand.  Philip  stood 
for  a  moment  in  thoughtful  silence :  his  exclamation  of  despair 
had  been  answered  as  by  his-  better  angel.  There  was  a  being 
more  miserable  than  himself;  and  the  Accursed  would  have 
envied  the  Bereaved  ! 

The  twilight  had  closed  in;  the  earliest  star — the  star  of 
Memory  and  Love,  the  Hesperus  hymned  by  every  poet  since  the 
world  began — was  fair  in  the  arch  of  heaven,  as  Philip  quitted 
the  spot,  with  a  spirit  more  reconciled  to  the  future,  more  soften- 
ed, chastened,  attuned  to  gentle  and  pious  thoughts,  than  perhaps, 
ever  yet  had  made  his  soul  dominant  over  the  deep  and  dark  tide 
of  his  gloomy  passions.  He  went  thence  to  a  neighboring  sculp- 
tor, and  paid  beforehand  for  a  plain  tablet  to  be  placed  above  the 
grave  he  had  left.  He  had  just  quitted  that  shop,  in  the  same 
street,  not  mai^y  doors  removed  from  the  house  in  which  his 
mother  that  breathed  her  last.  He  was  pausing  by  a  crossing,  irreso- 
lute whether  to  repair  at  once  to  the  home  assigned  to  Sidney,  or  to 
seek  some  shelter  in  town  for  that  night,  when  three  men  who  were 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  way  suddenly  caught  sight  of  him. 

"There  he  is — there  he  is ;  stop,  sir  !  stop  !  " 

Philip  heard  these  words,  looked  up  and  recognized  the  voice 
and  the  person  of  Mr.  Plaskwith  ;  the  bookseller  was  accompan- 
ied by  Mr.  Plimmins  and  a  sturdy,  ill-favored  stranger. 

A  nameless  feeling  of  fear,  rage,  and  disgust  seized  the  unhappy 
boy,  and  at  the  same  moment  a  ragged  vagabond  whispered  to 
him.  "  Stump  it,  my  cove;  that's  a  Bow  Street  runner." 

Then  there  shot  through  Philip's  mind  the  recollection  of  the 
money  he  had  seized,  though  but  to  dash  away :  was  he  now — 
he,  still  to  his  own  conviction,  the  heir  of  an  ancient  and  spotless 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  lOp 

name — to  be  hunted  as  a  thief ;  or,  at  the  best,  what  right  over 
his  person  and  his  liberty  had  he  given  to  his  taskmaker?  Ignor- 
ant of  the  law,  the  law  only  seemed  to  him,  as  it  ever  does  to  the 
ignorant  and  the  friendless — a  foe.  Quicker  than  lightning  these 
thoughts,  which  it  takes  so  many  words  to  describe,  flashed 
through  the  storm  and  the  darkness  of  his  breast ;  and  at  the  very 
i  nstant  that  Mr.  Plimmins  had  laid  hands  on  his  shoulder  his 
resolution  was  formed.  The  instinct  of  self  beat  loud  at  his  heart. 
With  a  bound,  a  spring  that  sent  Mr.  Plimmins  sprawling  in  the 
kennel,  he  darted  across  the  road,  and  fled  down  an  opposite  lane. 

"  Stop  him !  stop  !  "  cried  the  bookseller,  and  the  officer  rushed 
after  him  with  almost  equal  speed.  Lane  after  lane,  alley  after 
alley,  fled  Philip:  dodging,  winding,  breathless,  panting;  and 
lane  after  lane,  alley  after  alley,  thickened  at  his  heels  the  crowd 
that  pursued.  The  idle  and  the  curious,  and  the  officious, — 
ragged  boys,  ragged  men,  from  stall  and  from  cellar,  from  corner 
and  from  crossing,  joined  in  that  delicious  chase,  which  runs 
down  young  Error  till  it  sinks,  too  often,  at  the  door  of  the  gaol 
or  the  foot  of  the  gallows.  But  Philip  slackened  not  his  pace ; 
he  began  to  distance  his  pursuers.  He  was  now  in  a  street  which 
they  had  not  yet  entered — a  quiet  street,  with  few,  if  any,  shops. 
Before  the  threshold  of  a  better  kind  of  public-house,  or  rather 
tavern,  to  judge  by  its  appearance,  lounged  two  men  ;  and  while 
Philip  flew  on,  the  cry  of  "  Stop  him  !  "  had  changed  as  the  shout 
passed  to  new  voices,  into  "Stop  the  thief!'1 — that  cry  yet 
howled  in  the  distance.  One  of  the  loungers  seized  him :  Philip, 
desperate  and  ferocious,  struck  him  with  all  his  force ;  but  the 
blow  was  scarcely  felt  by  that  Herculean  frame. 

"  Pish  !  "  said  the  man  scornfully  ;  '  I  am  no  spy ;  if  you  run 
from  justice,  I  would  help  you  to  a  sign-post." 

Struck  by  the  voice,  Philip  looked  hard  at  the  speaker.  It  was 
the  voice  of  the  Accursed  Son. 

"Save  me  !  you  remember  me  ?  "  said  the  orphan,  faintly. 

"  Ah  !  I  think  I  do  ;  poor  lad  !   Follow  me — this  way  !  " 

The  stranger  turned  within  the  tavern,  passed  the  hall  through 
a  sort  of  corridor  that  led  into  a  back-yard  which  opened  upon  a 
nest  of  courts  or  passages. 

"  You  are  safe  for  the  present ;  I  will  take  you  where  you  can 
tell  me  all  at  your  ease.  See  !  "  As  he  spoke  they  emerged  into 
an  open  street,  and  the  guide  pointed  to  a  row  of  hackney- 
coaches.  "Be  quick;  get  in.  Coachman,  drive  fast  to " 

Philip  did  not  hear  the  rest  of  the  direction. 

Our  storv  returns  to  Sidney. 


HO  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

CHAPTER  III. 

"  Nous  vous  mettrons  a  couvert 
Repondit  le  pot  de  fer : 
Si  quelque  matiere  dure 
Vous  menace  d'aventure, 
Entre  deux  je  passerai, 
Et  du  coup  vous  sauverai. 
*  *  *  * 

Le  pot  de  terre  en  souffire !  "* — LA  FONTAINE. 

"  SIDNEY,  come  here  sir  !  What  have  you  been  at?  You  have 
torn  your  frill  into  tatters  !  How  did  you  do  this !  Come,  sir, 
no  lies." 

"  Indeed,  ma'am,  it  was  not  my  fault.  I  just  put  my  head  out 
of  the  window  to  see  the  coach  go  by,  and  a  nail  caught  me 
here." 

' '  Why,  you  little  plague  !  You  have  scratched  yourself — you 
are  always  in  mischief.  What  business  had  you  to  look  after  the 
coach  ? ' ' 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Sidney,  hanging  his  head  ruefully. 

"La,  mother!  "  cried  the  youngest  of  the  cousins,  a  square- 
built,  ruddy,  coarse- featured  urchin,  about  Sidney's  age, — "La, 
mother,  he  never  see  a  coach  in  the  street  when  we  are  at  play 
but  he  runs  arter  it." 

"After,  not  arter,"  said  Mr.  Roger  Morton,  taking  the  pipe 
from  his  mouth. 

"  Why  do  you  go  after  the  coaches,  Sidney? "  said  Mrs.  Mor- 
ton; "  it  is  very  naughty ;  you  will  be  run  over  some  day." 

"Yes,  ma'am,"  said  Sidney,  who  during  the  whole  colloquy, 
had  been  trembling  from  head  to  foot. 

"  <  Yes,  ma'am,'  and  '  no  ma'am' :  you  have  no  more  manners 
than  a  cobbler's  boy." 

"Don't  tease  the  child,  my  dear;  he  is  crying,"  said  Mr. 
Morton,  more  authoritatively  than  usual.  ' ( Come  here,  my  man !  " 
and  the  worthy  uncle  took  him  in  his  lap  and  held  his  glass  of 
brandy  and  water  to  his  lips;  Sidney,  too  frightened  to  refuse, 
sipped  hurriedly,  keeping  his  large  eyes  fixed  on  his  aunt,  as 
children  do  when  they  fear  a  cuff. 

"You  spoil  the  boy  more  than  you  do  your  own  flesh  and 
blood,"  said  Mrs.  Morton,  greatly  displeased. 

Here  Tom,  the  youngest  born  before  described,  put  his  mouth 

*  We,  replied  the  Iron  Pot,  will  shield  you :  should  any  hard  substance  menace  you  with 
danger,  I'll  intervene,  and  save  you  from  the  shock.  *  *  *  The  Earthen  Pot  was  th« 
sufferer ! 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  Ill 

to  his  mother's  ear,  and  whispered  loud  enough  to  be  heard  b> 
all :  "  He  runs  arter  the  coach  "cause  he  thinks  his  ma  may  be  in 
it.  Who's  homesick,  I  should  like  to  know?  Ba!  Baa  !  " 

The  boy  pointed  his  finger  over  his  mother's  shoulder,  and  the 
other  children  burst  into  a  loud  giggle. 

"Leave  the  room,  all  of  you;  leave  the  room!"  said  Mr. 
Morton,  rising  angrily  and  stamping  his  foot. 

The  children,  who  were  in  great  awe  of  their  father,  huddled 
and  hustled  each  other  to  the  door ;  but  Tom,  who  went  last, 
bold  in  his  mother's  favor,  popped  his  head  through  the  doorway, 
and  cried,  "Good-by,  little  home-sick!" 

A  sudden  slap  in  the  face  from  his  father  changed  his  chuckle 
into  a  very  different  kind  of  music,  and  a  loud,  indignant  sob 
was  heard  without  for  some  moments  after  the  door  was  closed. 

"If  that's  the  way  you  behave  to  your  children,  Mr.  Morton, 
I  vow  you  shan't  have  any  more  if  I  can  help  it.  Don't  come 
near  me — don't  touch  me !  "  and  Mrs.  Morton  assumed  the  resent- 
ful air  of  offended  beauty. 

"Pshaw  !  "  growled  the  spouse,  and  he  reseated  himself  and 
resumed  his  pipe.  There  was  a  dead  silence.  Sidney  crouched 
near  his  uncle,  looking  very  pale.  Mrs.  Morton,  who  was  knit- 
ting, knitted  away  with  the  excited  energy  of  nervous  irritation. 

"Ring  the  bell,  Sidney,"  said  Mr.  Morton.  The  boy  obeyed; 
the  parlor-maid  entered.  "Take  Master  Sidney  to  his  room; 
keep  the  boys  away  from  him,  and  give  him  a  large  slice  of  bread 
and  jam,  Martha." 

"Jam,  indeed  !  treacle,"  said  Mrs.  Morton. 

"Jam,  Martha  !  "  repeated  the  uncle,  authoritatively. 

"  Treacle  !  "  reiterated  the  aunt. 

"Jam,  I  say  !" 

"Treacle,  you  hear:  and  for  that  matter,  Martha  has  no  jam 
to  give !  " 

The  husband  had  nothing  more  to  say. 

"Good-night,  Sidney;  there's  a  good  boy,  go  and  kiss  your 
aunt  and  make  your  bow;  and  I  say,  my  lad,  don't  mind  those 
plagues.  I'll  talk  to  them  to-morrow,  that  I  will ;  no  one  shall  be 
unkind  to  you  in  my  house." 

Sidney  muttered  something,  and  went  timidly  up  to  Mrs.  Mor- 
ton. His  look  so  gentle  and  subdued ;  his  eyes  full  of  tears ;  his 
pretty  mouth  which,  though  silent,  pleaded  so  eloquently;  his 
willingness  to  forgive,  and  his  wish  to  be  forgiven,  might  have 
melted  many  a  heart  harder,  perhaps,  than  Mrs.  Morton's.  But 
there  reigned  what  are  worse  than  hardness, — prejudice  and 
wounded  vanity — maternal  vanity.  His  contrast  to  her  own  rough, 


112  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

coarse  children  grated  on  her,  and  set  the  teeth  of  her  mind  on 
edge. 

"  There,  child,  don't  tread  on  my  gown ;  you  are  so  awkward  : 
say  your  prayers,  and  don't  throw  off  the  counterpane !  I  don't 
like  slovenly  boys." 

Sidney  put  his  finger  in  his  mouth,  drooped,  and  vanished. 

"  Now,  Mrs.  M.,"  said  Mr.  Morton  abruptly,  and  knocking  out 
the  ashes  of  his  pipe;  "  now  Mrs.  M.,  one  word  for  all :  I  have 
told  you  that  I  promised  poor  Catherine  to  be  a  father  to  that 
child,  and  it  goes  to  my  heart  to  see  him  so  snubbed.  Why  you 
dislike  him  I  can't  guess  for  the  life  of  me.  I  never  saw  a  sweeter- 
tempered  child." 

"Go  on,  sir, — go  on  :  make  your  personal  reflections  on  your 
own  lawful  wife.  They  don't  hurt  me ;  oh  no,  not  at  all !  Sweet- 
tempered,  indeed ;  I  suppose  your  own  children  are  not  sweet- 
tempered  ? ' ' 

"That's  neither  here  nor  there,"  said  Mr.  Morton:  "my 
own  children  are  such  as  God  made  them,  and  I  am  very  well 
satisfied." 

' '  Indeed  you  may  be  proud  of  such  a  family ;  and  to  think  of 
the  pains  I  have  taken  with  them,  and  how  I  have  saved  you  in 
nurses,  and  the  bad  times  I  have  had ;  and  now,  to  find  their  noses 
put  out  of  joint  by  that  little  mischief-making  interloper — it  is  too 
bad  of  you,  Mr.  Morton ;  you  will  break  my  heart, — that  you  will !  " 

Mrs.  Morton  put  her  handkerchief  to  her  eyes  and  sobbed. 

The  husband  was  moved  :  he  got  up  and  attempted  to  take  her 
hand.  "  Indeed,  Margaret,  I  did  not  mean  to  vex  you." 

"And  I  who  have  been  such  a  fa-fai-faithful  wi-wi-wife,  and 
brought  you  such  a  deal  of  mon-mon-money,  and  always  stud- 
stud-studied  your  interests;  many's  the  time  when  you  have 
been  fast  asleep,  that  I  have  set  up  half  the  night  men-men-mend- 
ing the  house  linen ;  and  you  have  not  been  the  same  man,  Roger, 
since  that  boy  came !  " 

"Well,  well!  "  said  the  good  man,  quite  overcome,  and  fairly 
taking  her  round  the  waist  and  kissing  her;  "no  words  between 
us ;  it  makes  life  quite  unpleasant.  If  it  pains  you  to  have  Sid- 
ney here,  I  will  put  him  to  some  school  in  the  town,  where  they'll 
be  kind  to  him.  Only,  if  you  would,  Margaret,  for  my  sake — 
old  girl !  Come,  now  !  there's  a  darling  ! — just  be  more  tender 
with  him.  You  see  he  frets  so  after  his  mother.  Think  how 
little  Tom  would  fret  if  he  was  away  from  you !  Poor  little 
Tom!" 

"La  !  Mr.  Morton,  you  are  such  a  man  !  There's  no  resisting 
your  ways !  You  know  how  to  come  over  me;  don't  you ?" 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  113 

And  Mrs.  Morton  smiled  benignly,  as  she  escaped  from  his 
conjugal  arms  and  smoothed  her  cap. 

Peace  thus  restored,  Mr.  Morton  refilled  his  pipe,  and  the 
good  lady,  after  a  pause,  resumed,  in  a  very  mild,  conciliatory 
tone: 

"I'll  tell  you  what  it  is,  Roger,  that  vexes  me  with  that  there 
child.  He  is  so  deceitful,  and  he  does  tell  such  fibs !  " 

"Fibs?  that  is  a  very  bad  fault,"  said  Mr.  Morton  gravely. 
"  That  must  be  corrected." 

"  It  was  but  the  other  day  that  I  saw  him  break  a  pane  of  glass 
in  the  shop ;  and  when  I  taxed  him  with  it,  he  denied  it ;  and 
with  such  a  face  !  I  can't  abide  story- telling." 

"Let  me  know  the  next  story  he  tells;  I'll  cure  him,"  said 
Mr.  Morton,  sternly.  "You  know  how  I  broke  Tom  of  it. 
Spare  the  rod,  and  spoil  the  child.  And  when  I  promised  to  be 
kind  to  the  boy,  of  course  I  did  not  mean  that  I  was  not  to  take 
care  of  his  morals,  and  see  that  he  grew  up  an  honest  man.  Tell 
truth  and  shame  the  devil — tnat's  my  motto." 

"Spoke  like  yourself,  Roger  !  "  said  Mrs.  Morton,  with  great 
animation.  "  But  you  see  he  has  not  had  the  advantage  of  such 
a  father  as  you.  I  wonder  your  sister  don't  write  to  you.  Some 
people  make  a  great  fuss  about  their  feelings ;  but  out  of  sight 
out  of  mind." 

"  I  hope  she  is  not  ill.  Poor  Catherine  !  she  looked  in  a  very 
bad  way  when  she  was  here,"  said  Mr.  Morton;  and  he  turned 
uneasily  to  the  fireplace  and  sighed. 

Here  the  servant  entered  with  the  supper-tray,  and  the  conver- 
sation fell  upon  other  topics. 

Mrs.  Roger  Morton's  charge  against  Sidney  was,  alas !  too  true. 
He  had  acquired,  under  that  roof,  a  terrible  habit  of  telling 
stories.  He  had  never  incurred  that  vice  with  his  mother, 
because  then  and  there  he  had  nothing  to  fear;  now,  he  had 
everything  to  fear ;  the  grim  aunt — even  the  quiet,  kind,  cold, 
austere  uncle — the  apprentices — the  strange  servants — and,  oh  ! 
more  than  all,  those  hard-eyed,  loud-laughing  tormentors,  the 
boys  of  his  own  age!  Naturally  timid,  severity  made  him 
actually  a  coward ;  and  when  the  nerves  tremble,  a  lie  sounds  as 
surely  as,  when  I  vibrate  that  wire,  the  bell  at  the  end  of  it  will 
ring.  Beware  of  the  man  who  has  been  roughly  treated  as  a  child. 

The  day  after  the  conference  just  narrated,  Mr.  Morton,  who 
was  subject  to  erysipelas,  had  taken  a  little  cooling  medicine. 
He  breakfasted,  therefore,  later  than  usual — after  the  rest  of  the 
family  ;  and  at  this  meal,/<w  lui  soulager,  he  ordered  the  luxury 
of  a  muffin.  Now  it  so  chanced,  that  h"  had  only  finished  half 

8 


114  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

the  muffin,  and  drunk  one  cup  of  tea,  when  he  was  called  into 
the  shop  by  a  customer  of  great  importance,  a  prosy  old  lady, 
who  always  gave  her  orders  with  remarkable  precision,  and  who 
valued  herself  on  a  character  for  affability,  which  she  maintained 
by  never  buying  a  penny  riband  without  asking  the  shopman  how 
all  his  family  were,  and  talking  news  about  every  other  family  in 
the  place.  At  the  time  Mr.  Morton  left  the  parlor,  Sidney  and 
Master  Tom  were  therein,  seated  on  two  stools,  and  casting  up 
division  sums  on  their  respective  slates ;  a  point  of  education  to 
which  Mr.  Morton  attended  with  great  care.  As  soon  as  his 
father's  back  was  turned,  Master  Tom's  eyes  wandered  from  the 
slate  to  the  muffin,  as  it  leered  at  him  from  the  slop-basin.  Never 
did  Pythian  sibyl,  seated  above  the  bubbling  spring,  utter  more 
oracular  eloquence  to  her  priest,  than  did  that  muffin — at  least 
the  parts  of  it  yet  extant — utter  to  the  fascinated  senses  of  Master 
Tom.  First  he  sighed ;  then  he  moved  round  on  his  stool ; 
then  he  got  up  ;  then  he  peered  at  the  muffin  from  a  respectful 
distance ;  then  he  gradually  approached,  and  walked  round,  and 
round,  and  round  it,  his  eyes  getting  bigger  and  bigger;  then  he 
peeped  through  the  glass-door  into  the  shop,  and  saw  his  father 
busily  engaged  with  the  old  lady ;  then  he  began  to  calculate  and 
philosophize,  perhaps  his  father  had  done  breakfast ;  perhaps  he 
would  not  come  back  at  all ;  if  he  came  back,  he  would  not  miss 
one  corner  of  the  muffin;  and  if  he  did  miss  it,  why  should  Tom 
be  supposed  to  have  taken  it  ?  As  he  thus  communed  with  him- 
self, he  drew  nearer  into  the  fatal  vortex,  and  at  last,  with  a  des- 
perate plunge,  he  seized  the  triangular  temptation : 

"  And  ere  a  man  had  power  to  say  '  Behold ! ' 
The  jaws  of  Thomas  had  devoured  it  up." 

Sidney,  disturbed  from  his  studies  by  the  agitation  of  his  com- 
panion, witnessed  this  proceeding  with  great  and  conscientious 
alarm.  "  Oh,  Tom  !  "  said  he,  "  what  will  your  papa  say?  " 

"Look  at  that!  "  said  Tom,  putting  his  fist  under  Sidney's 
reluctant  nose.  "If  father  misses  it,  you'll  say  the  cat  took  it. 
If  you  don't — my  eye  !  what  a  whopping  I'll  give  you  !  " 

Here  Mr.  Morton's  voice  was  heard,  wishing  the  lady  "  Good- 
morning  !"  and  Master  Tom,  thinking  it  better  to  leave  the 
credit  of  the  invention  solely  to  Sidney,  whispered :  "  Say  I'm 
gone  upstairs  for  my  pocket  hanker,"  and  hastily  absconded. 

Mr.  Morton,  already  in  a  very  bad  humor,  partly  at  the  effects 
of  the  cooling  medicine,  partly  at  the  suspension  of  his  breakfast, 
stalked  into  the  parlor.  His  tea — the  second  cup  already  poured 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  lit 5 

Out — was  cold.     He  turned  towards  the  muffin,  and  missed  the 
lost  piece  at  a  glance. 

' '  Who   has  been  at  my  muffin  ? ' '    said  he,  in  a  voice  that 
seemed  to  Sidney  like  the  voice  he  had  always  supposed  an  ogre 
to  possess.     "  Have  you,  Master  Sidney?" 
'  N-n-no,  sir;  indeed,  sir  !  " 
'  Then  Tom  has.     Where  is  he  ?  " 
'Gone  upstairs  for  his  handkerchief,  sir." 
'  Did  he  take  my  muffin  ?     Speak  the  truth  !  " 
'  No,  sir;  it  was  the — it  was  the — the  cat,  sir ! " 
'  Oh  you  wicked,  wicked  boy  !  "  cried  Mrs.  Morton,  who  had 
followed  her  husband  into  the  shop ;   ' '  the  cat  kittened  last  night, 
and  is  locked  up  in  the  coal-cellar !  " 

"  Come  here,  Master  Sidney  !  No  !  first  go  down,  Margaret, 
and  see  if  the  cat  is  in  the  cellar :  it  might  have  got  out,  Mrs. 
M.,"  said  Mr.  Morton,  just  even  in  his  wrath. 

Mrs.  Morton  went,  and  there  was  a  dead  silence,  except  indeed 
in  Sidney's  heart,  which  beat  louder  than  a  clock  ticks.  Mr. 
Morton,  meanwhile,  went  to  a  little  cupboard ;  while  still  there, 
Mrs.  Morton  returned  :  the  cat  was  in  the  cellar ;  the  key  turned 
on  her,  in  no  mood  to  eat  muffins,  poor  thing !  she  would  not 
even  lap  her  milk  !  like  her  mistress,  she  had  had  a  very  bad  time  ! 

"Now  come  here,  sir!  "  said  Mr.  Morton,  withdrawing  him- 
self from  the  cupboard,  with  a  small  horsewhip  in  his  hand,  "  I 
will  teach  you  how  to  speak  the  truth  in  future  !  Confess  that  you 
have  told  a  lie  !  " 

' '  Yes,  sir,  it  was  a  lie  !  Pray — pray  forgive  me ;  but  Tom  made 
me!" 

"  What !  when  poor  Tom  is  upstairs?  worse  and  worse  !  "  said 
Mrs.  Morton,  lifting  up  her  hands  and  eyes.  "  What  a  viper  !" 

"For  shame,  boy, — for  shame!  Take  that — and  that — and 
that—" 

Writhing,  shrinking,  still  more  terrified  than  hurt,  the  poor 
child  cowered  beneath  the  lash. 

"Mamma!  mamma!"  he  cried  at  last,  "Oh  why — why  did 
you  leave  me?" 

At  these  words  Mr.  Morton  stayed  his  hand,  the  whip  fell  to 
the  ground. 

"Yet  it  is  all  for  the  boy's  good,"  he  muttered.  "There, 
child,  I  hope  this  is  the  last  time.  There,  you  are  not  much  hurt. 
Zounds,  don't  cry  so  !  " 

"  He  will  alarm  the  whole  street,"  said  Mrs.  Morton;  "I  never 
see  such  a  child  !  Here,  take  this  parcel  to  Mrs.  Birnie's — you 


n6  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

know  the  house — only  next  street,  and  dry  your  eyes  before  you 
get  there.  Don't  go  through  the  shop;  this  way  out." 

She  pushed  the  child,  still  sobbing  with  vehemence  that  she 
could  not  comprehend,  through  the  private  passage  into  the  street, 
and  returned  to  her  husband. 

"You  are  convinced  now,  Mr.  M.  ?" 

"Pshaw!  ma'am;  don't  talk.  But,  to  be  sure,  that's  how  I 
cured  Tom  of  fibbing.  The  tea's  as  cold  as  a  stone  ! " 

CHAPTER  IV. 

"  Le  bien  nous  le  faisons  :  le  mal  c'est  la  Fortune. 

On  a  toujours  raison,  le  Destin  toujours  tort."* — LA  FONTAINE. 

UPON  the  early  morning  of  the  day  commemorated  by  the  his- 
torical events  of  our  last  chapter,  two  men  were  deposited  by  a 
branch  coach  at  the  inn  of  a  hamlet  about  ten  miles  distant  from 
the  town  in  which  Mr.  Roger  Morton  resided.  Though  the 
hamlet  was  small,  the  inn  was  large,  for  it  was  placed  close  by  a 
huge  finger-post  that  pointed  to  three  great  roads :  one  led  to  the 
town  before  mentioned  ;  another,  to  the  heart  of  a  manufacturing 
district ;  and  a  third,  to  a  populous  seaport.  The  weather  was 
fine  and  the  two  travellers  ordered  breakfast  to  be  taken  into  an 
arbor  in  the  garden,  as  well  as  the  basins  and  towels  necessary  for 
ablution.  The  elder  of  the  travellers  appeared  to  be  unequivo- 
cally foreign ;  you  would  have  guessed  him  at  once  for  a  German. 
He  wore,  what  was  then  very  uncommon  in  this  couutry,  a  loose, 
brown  linen  blouse,  buttoned  to  the  chin,  with  a  leathern  belt, 
into  which  were  stuck  a  German  meerschaum  and  a  tobacco- 
pouch.  He  had  very  long  flaxen  hair,  false  or  real,  that  streamed 
half-way  down  his  back,  large  light  mustaches,  and  a  rough,  sun- 
burnt complexion,  which  made  the  fairness  of  the  hair  more 
remarkable.  He  wore  an  enormous  pair  of  green  spectacles,  and 
complained  much,  in  broken  English,  of  the  weakness  of  his  eyes. 
All  about  him,  even  to  the  smallest  minutiae,  indicated  the  Ger- 
man ;  not  only  the  large  muscular  frame,  the  broad  feet,  and  vast 
though  well-shaped  hands,  but  the  brooch — evidently  purchased 
of  a  Jew  in  some  great  fair — stuck  ostentatiously  and  superflously 
into  his  stock ;  the  quaint,  droll-looking  carpet-bag,  which  he 
refused  to  trust  to  the  boots ;  and  the  great,  massive,  dingy  ring 
which  he  wore  on  his  forefinger.  The  other  was  a  slender, 

*  The  Good,  we  effect  ourselves  ;  the  Evil   is  the  handiwork  of  Fortune.     Mortals  are 
»lways  in  the  right,  Destiny  always  in  the  wron? 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  H  f 

remarkably  upright  and  sinewy  youth,  in  a  blue  frock,  over  which 
was  thrown  a  large  cloak,  a  travelling  cap,  with  a  shade  that  con- 
cealed all  of  the  upper  part  of  his  face,  except  a  dark  quick  eye, 
of  uncommon  fire,  and  a  shawl  handkerchief,  which  was  equally 
useful  in  concealing  the  lower  part  of  the  countenance.  On 
descending  from  the  coach,  the  German,  with  some  difficulty, 
made  the  ostler  understand  that  he  wanted  a  post-chaise  in  a  quar- 
ter of  an  hour ;  and  then,  without  entering  the  house,  he  and  his 
friend  strolled  to  the  arbor.  While  the  maid-servant  was  cover- 
ing the  table  with  bread,  butter,  tea,  eggs,  and  a  huge  round  of 
beef,  the  German  was  busy  in  washing  his  hands,  and  talking  in 
his  national  tongue  to  the  young  man,  who  returned  no  answer. 
But  as  soon  as  the  servant  had  completed  her  operations,  the  for- 
eigner turned  round,  and  observing  her  eyes  fixed  on  his  brooch 
with  much  female  admiration,  he  made  one  stride  to  her. 

"  Der  Teufel,  my  goot  Madchen — but  you  are  von  var — pretty 
— vat  you  call  it;"  and  he  gave  her,  as  he  spoke,  so  hearty  a 
smack  that  the  girl  was  more  flustered  than  flattered  by  the 
courtesy. 

"  Keep  yourself  to  yourself,  sir  !  "  said  she,  very  tartly  ;  "for 
chamber-maids  never  like  to  be  kissed  by  a  middle-aged  gentle- 
man when  a  younger  one  is  by  :  whereupon  the  German  replied 
by  a  pinch, — it  is  immaterial  to  state  the  exact  spot  to  which  that 
delicate  caress  was  directed.  But  this  last  offence  was  so  inexpi- 
able, that  the  "madchen"  bounced  off  with  a  face  of  scarlet, 
and  a  "Sir,  you  are  no  gentleman!  that's  what  you  arn't!" 
The  German  thrust  his  head  out  of  the  arbor,  and  followed  her 
with  a  loud  laugh ;  then,  drawing  himself  in  again,  he  said,  in 
quite  another  accent,  and  in  excellent  English,  "There,  Master 
Philip,  we  have  got  rid  of  the  girl  for  the  rest  of  the  morning, 
and  that's  exactly  what  I  wanted  to  do ;  women's  wits  are  con- 
foundedly sharp.  Well,  did  I  not  tell  you  right,  we  have  baffled 
all  the  bloodhounds  !  ' ' 

"And  here,  then,  Gawtrey,  we  are  to  part,"  said  Philip, 
mournfully. 

' '  I  wish  you  would  think  better  of  it,  my  boy, ' '  returned  Mr. 
Gawtrey,  breaking  an  egg;  "how  can  you  shift  for  yourself;  no 
kith  nor  kin,  not  even  that  important  machine  for  giving  advice 
called  a  friend — no,  not  a  friend,  when  I  am  gone?  I  foresee 
how  it  must  end.  [D — it,  salt  butter,  by  Jove  !  "] 

"If  I  were  alone  in  the  world,  as  I  have  told  you  again  and 

again,  perhaps  I  might  pin  my  fate  to  yours.     But  my  brother !  " 

"There  it  is,  always  wrong  when  we  act  from  our  feelings. 

My  whole  life,  which  some  day  or  other  I  will  tell  you,  proves 


I  1 8  NIGHT   AND    MORNING 

that.  Your  brother — bah  !  is  he  not  very  well  off  with  his  owh 
uncle  and  aunt?  plenty  to  eat  and  drink,  I  dare  say.  Come, 
man,  you  must  be  as  hungry  as  a  hawk  ;  a  slice  of  the  beef? 
Let  well  alone,  and  shift  for  yourself.  What  good  can  you  do 
your  brother  ?  ' ' 

"  I  don't  know,  but  I  must  see  him ;  I  have  sworn  it." 
"Well,  go  and  see  him,  and  then  strike  across  the  country  to 
me.     I  will  wait  a  day  for  you, — there  now  !  " 

"But  tell  me  first,"  said  Philip,  very  earnestly,  and  fixing  his 
dark  eyes   on   his   companion, — (<  tell  me — yes,    I   must   speak 
frankly — tell  me,  you  who  would  link  my  fortune  with  your  own, 
— tell  me,  what  and  who  are  you  ?  ' ' 
Gawtrey  looked  up. 

' '  What  do  you  suppose  ? ' '  said  he  drily. 

"  I  fear  to  suppose  anything,  lest  I  wrong  you :  but  the  strange 
place  to  which  you  took  me  the  evening  on  which  you  saved  me 
from  pursuit,  the  persons  I  met  there — " 
"  Well-dressed,  and  very  civil  to  you  !  "  . 
' '  True  !  but  with  a  certain  wild  looseness  in  their  talk  that — 
But  /  have  no  right  to  judge  others  by  mere  appearance.     Nor  is 
it  this  that  has  made  me  anxious,  and,  if  you  will,  suspicious." 
"What  then?" 
"  Your  dress — your  disguise." 

"  Disguised  yourself !  ha  !  ha  !  Behold  the  world's  charity  ! 
You  fly  from  some  danger,  some  pursuit,  disguised — you,  who 
hold  yourself  guiltless ;  I  do  the  same,  and  you  hold  me  criminal ; 
a  robber,  perhaps ;  a  murderer  it  may  be  !  I  will  tell  you  what 
I  am  :  I  am  a  son  of  Fortune,  an  adventurer  ;  I  live  by  my  wits ; 
so  do  poets  and  lawyers,  and  all  the  charlatans  of  the  world  ;  I 
am  a  charlatan — a  chameleon.  (  Each  man  in  his  time  plays 
many  parts '  ;  I  play  any  part  in  which  Money,  the  Arch- 
Manager,  promises  me  a  livelihood.  Are  you  satisfied?  " 

"  Perhaps,"  answered  the  boy,  sadly,  "  when  I  know  more  of 
the  world,  I  shall  understand  you  better.  Strange — strange, 
that  you,  out  of  all  men,  should  have  been  kind  to  me  in  dis- 
tress !  " 

"  Not  at  all  strange.  Ask  the  beggar  whom  he  gets  the  most 
pence  from  :  the  fine  lady  in  her  carriage — the  beau  smelling  of 
eau  de  cologne  ?  Pish  !  the  people  nearest  to  being  beggars  them- 
selves keep  the  beggar  alive.  You  were  friendless,  and  the  man 
who  has  all  earth  for  a  foe  befriends  you.  It  is  the  way  of  the 
world,  sir, — the  way  of  the  world.  Come,  eat  while  you  can, 
this  time  next  year  you  may  have  no  beef  to  your  bread." 

Thus  masticating  and  moralizing  at  the  same  time,  Mr.  Gaw- 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  119 

trey  at  last  finished  a  breakfast  that  would  have  astonished  the 
whole  Corporation  of  London  ;  and  then  taking  out  a  large  old 
watch,  with  an  enamelled  back,  doubtless,  more  German  than  its 
master,  he  said,  as  he  lifted  up  his  carpet-bag,  "  I  must  be  off — 
tempus  fugit,  and  I  must  arrive  just  in  time  to  nick  the  vessels. 
Shall  get  to  Ostend,  or  Rotterdam,  safe  and  snug;  thence  to 
Paris.  How  my  pretty  Fan  will  have  grown  !  Ah,  you  don't 
know  Fan ;  make  you  a  nice  little  wife  one  of  these  days  !  Cheer 
up,  man,  we  shall  meet  again.  Be  sure  of  it;  and  hark  ye,  that 
strange  place,  as  you  call  it,  where  I  took  you, — you  can  find  it 
again?" 

"Not  I." 

"  Here,  then,  is  the  address.  When  ever  you  want  me,  go 
there,  ask  to  see  Mr.  Gregg — old  fellow  with  one  eye,  you  recol- 
lect— shake  him  by  the  hand  just  so — you  catch  the  trick — prac- 
tice it  again.  No,  the  forefinger  thus,  that's  right.  Say  '  blater,' 
no  more — '  blater ;  ' — stay,  I  will  write  it  down  for  you ;  and 
then  ask  for  William  Gawtrey's  direction.  He  will  give  it  you  at 
once,  without  questions — these  signs  understood  ;  and  if  you 
want  money  for  your  passage,  he  will  give  you  that  also,  with 
advice  into  the  bargain.  Always  a  warm  welcome  with  me. 
And  so  take  care  of  yourself,  and  good-by.  I  see  my  chaise  is 
at  the  door." 

As  he  spoke,  Gawtrey  shook  the  young  man's  hand  with  cor- 
dial vigor,  and  strode  off  to  his  chaise,  muttering,  "  Money  well 
laid  out — fee  money ;  I  shall  have  him,  and,  Gad,  I  like  him, 
poor  devil ! " 

CHAPTER  V. 

*•  He  is  a  cunning  coachman  that  can  turn  well  in  a  narrow  room." 

Old  Play  :  from  LAMB'S  Specimens. 
"  Here  are  two  pilgrims, 
And  neither  knows  one  footstep  of  the  way." 

HEYWOOD'S  Duchess  of  Suffolk.    Ibid. 

THE  chaise  had  scarce  driven  from  the  inn  door,  when  a  coach 
stopped  to  change  horses  on  its  last  stage  to  the  town  to  which 
Philip  was  bound.  The  name  of  the  destination,  in  gilt  letters 
on  the  coach-door,  caught  his  eye,  as  he  walked  from  the  arbor 
towards  the  road,  and  in  a  few  moments  he  was  seated  as  the 
fourth  passenger  in  the  "  Nelson  Slow  and  Sure."  From  under 
the  shade  of  his  cap  he  darted  that  quick,  quiet  glance,  which  a 
man  who  hunts,  or  is  hunted, — in  other  words,  who  observes,  or 


120  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

shuns, — soon  acquires.  At  his  left  hand  sat  a  young  woman  in  a 
cloak  lined  with  yellow  ;  she  had  taken  off  her. bonnet  and  pinned 
it  to  the  roof  of  the  coach,  and  looked  fresh  and  pretty  in  a  silk 
handkerchief,  which  she  had  tied  round  her  head,  probably  to 
serve  as  a  nightcap  during  the  drowsy  length  of  the  journey. 
Opposite  to  her  was  a  middle-aged  man  of  pale  complexion,  and 
a  grave,  pensive,  studious  expression  of  face ;  and  vis-d-vis  to 
Philip  sat  an  overdressed,  showy,  very  good-looking  man  of  about 
two  or  three-and-forty.  This  gentleman  wore  auburn  whiskers, 
which  met  at  the  chin;  a  foraging  cap,  with  a  gold  tassel;  a  vel- 
vet waistcoat,  across  which,  in  various  folds,  hung  a  golden 
chain,  at  the  end  of  which  dangled  an  eye-glass,  that  from  time 
to  time  he  screwed,  as  it  were,  into  his  right  eye ;  he  wore,  also, 
a  blue  silk  stock,  with  a  frill  much  crumpled  ;  dirty  kid  gloves, 
and  over  his  lap  lay  a  cloak  lined  with  red  silk.  As  Philip 
glanced  towards  this  personage,  the  latter  fixed  his  glass  also  at 
him,  with  a  scrutinizing  stare,  which  drew  fire  from  Philip's  dark 
eyes.  The  man  dropped  his  glass,  and  said  in  a  half  provincial, 
half  haw-haw  tone,  like  the  stage-exquisite  of  a  minor  theatre, 
"  Pawdon  me,  and  split  legs!"  therewith  stretching  himself 
between  Philip's  limbs,  in  the  approved  fashion  of  inside  pas- 
sengers. A  young  man  in  a  white  great-coat  now  came  to  the 
door  with  a  glass  of  warm  sherry  and  water. 

"You  must  take  this — you  must  now;  it  will  keep  the  cold 
out,"  (the  day  was  broiling,)  said  he  to  the  young  woman. 

"  Gracious  me  !  "  was  the  answer,  "but  I  never  drink  wine  of 
a  morning, James ;  it  will  get  into  my  head." 

"To  oblige  me'"  said  the  young  man,  sentimentally;  where- 
upon the  young  lady  took  the  glass,  and  looking  very  kindly  at 
her  Ganymede,  said,  "Your  health  !  "  and  sipped,  and  made  a 
wry  face ;  then  she  looked  at  the  passengers,  tittered,  and  said, 
"  I  can't  bear  wine  !  "  and  so,  very  slowly  and  daintily,  sipped 
up  the  rest.  A  silent  and  expressive  squeeze  of  the  hand,  on 
returning  the  glass,  rewarded  the  young  man,  and  proved  the 
salutary  effect  of  his  prescription. 

' '  All  right !  ' '  cried  the  coachman :  the  ostler  twitched  the 
cloths  from  the  leaders,  and  away  went  the  ' '  Nelson  Slow  and 
Sure,"  with  as  much  pretension  as  if  it  had  meant  to  do  the  ten 
miles  in  an  hour.  The  pale  gentleman  took  from  his  waistcoat- 
pocket  a  little  box  containing  gum-arabic,  and  having  inserted  a 
couple  of  morsels  between  his  lips,  he  next  drew  forth  a  little 
thin  volume,  which  from  the  manner  the  lines  were  printed  was 
evidently  devoted  to  poetry. 

The  smart  gentleman,  who  since  the  episode  of  the  sherry  and 
water  had  kept  his  glass  fixed  upon  the  young  lady,  now  said, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  121 

with  a  genteel  smirk,  "  That  young  gentleman  seems  very  atten- 
tive, miss  !  " 

"He  is  a  very  good  young  man,  sir,  and  takes  great  care  of 
me." 

"Not  your  brother,  miss, — eh?" 

"La,  sir  !  why  not?  " 

' '  No  faumily  likeness — noice-looking  fellow  enough  !  But  your 
oiyes  and  mouth — ah,  miss  !  " 

Miss  turned  away  her  head,  and  uttered  with  pert  vivacity ; 

"I  never  likes  compliments,  sir  !  But  the  young  man  is  not  my 
brother." 

"A  sweetheart,  eh?  Oh  fie,  miss!  Haw!  haw!"  and  the 
auburn  whiskered  Adonis  poked  Philip  in  the  knee  with  one  hand, 
and  the  pale  gentleman  in  the  ribs  with  the  other.  The  latter 
looked  up,  and  reproachfully ;  the  former  drew  in  his  legs,  and 
uttered  an  angry  ejaculation. 

"  Well,  sir,  there  is  no  harm  in  a  sweetheart,  is  there?  " 

"None  in  the  least,  ma'am;  I  advoise  you  to  double  the  dose. 
We  often  hear  of  two  strings  to  a  bow.  Daun't  you  think  it 
would  be  noicer  to  have  two  beaux  to  your  string?  " 

As  he  thus  wittily  expressed  himself,  the  gentleman  took  off  his 
cap,  and  thrust  his  fingers  through  a  very  curling  and  comely 
head  of  hair  ;  the  young  lady  looked  at  him  with  evident  coquetry, 
and  said,  "  How  you  do  run  on,  you  gentlemen !  " 

"  I  may  well  run  on,  miss,  as  long  as  I  run  aufter  you,"  was  the 
gallant  reply. 

Here  the  pale  gentleman,  evidently  annoyed  by  being  talked 
across,  shut  his  book  up,  and  looked  round.  His  eye  rested  on 
Philip,  who,  whether  from  the  heat  of  the  day  or  from  the  for- 
getfulness  of  thought,  had  pushed  his  cap  from  his  brows ;  and 
the  gentleman,  after  staring  at  him  for  a  few  moments  with  great 
earnestness,  sighed  so  heavily  that  it  attracted  the  notice  of  all  the 
passengers. 

"  Are  you  unwell,  sir  !  "  asked  the  young  lady  compassion- 
ately. 

"  A  little  pain  in  my  side,  nothing  more  !  " 

"  Chaunge  plauces  with  me,  sir,"  cried  the  Lothario,  officiously. 
"  Now  do  ! "  The  pale  gentleman,  after  a  short  hesitation,  and  a 
bashful  excuse,  accepted  the  proposal.  In  a  few  moments  the 
young  lady  and  the  beau  were  in  deep  and  whispered  conversa- 
tion, their  heads  turned  towards  the  window.  The  pale  gentle- 
man continued  to  gaze  at  Philip,  till  the  latter,  perceiving  the 
notice  he  excited,  colored,  and  replaced  his  cap  over  his  face. 


122  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

"Are  you  going  to  N ?  "  asked  the  gentleman,  in  a  gentle, 

timid  voice. 

"Yes!" 

"  Is  it  the  first  time  you  have  ever  been  there  ?  " 

"  Sir !  "  returned  Philip,  in  a  voice  that  spoke  surprise  and  dis- 
taste at  his  neighbor's  curiosity. 

"  Forgive  me,"  said  the  gentleman,  shrinking  back;  "  but  you 
remind  me  of — of — a  family  I  once  knew  in  the  town.  Do  you 
know — the — the  Mortons?  " 

One  in  Philip's  situation,  with,  as  he  supposed,  the  officers  of 
justice  in  his  track  (for  Gawtrey,  for  reasons  of  his  own,  rather 
encouraged  than  allayed  his  fears),  might  well  be  suspicious.  He 
replied  therefore  shortly,  "I  am  quite  a  stranger  to  the  town," 
and  ensconced  himself  in  the  corner,  as  if  to  take  a  nap.  Alas ! 
that  answer  was  one  of  the  many  obstacles  he  was  doomed  to 
build  up  between  himself  and  a  fairer  fate. 

The  gentleman  sighed  again,  and  never  spoke  more  to  the  end 
of  the  journey.  When  the  coach  halted  at  the  inn, — the  same  inn 
which  had  before  given  its  shelter  to  poor  Catherine, — the  young 
man  in  the  white  coat  opened  the  door,  and  offered  his  arm  to  the 
young  lady. 

"  Do  you  make  any  stay  here,  sir  ?  "  said  she  to  the  beau,  as 
she  unpinned  her  bonnet  from  the  roof. 

"Perhaps  so  :  I  am  waiting  for  my  phe-aton,  which  my  fael- 
low  is  to  bring  down, — tauking  a  little  tour." 

"We  shall  be  very  happy  to  see  you,  sir,"  said  the  lady,  on 
whom  the  phe-0ton  completed  the  effect  produced  by  the  gentle- 
man's previous  gallantries ;  and  with  that  she  dropped  into  his 
hand  a  very  neat  card,  on  which  was  printed,  "Wavers  and 
Snow,  Staymakers,  High  Street." 

The  beau  put  the  card  gracefully  into  his  pocket ;  leaped  from 
the  coach ;  nudged  aside  his  rival  of  the  white  coat,  and  offered 
his  arm  to  the  lady,  who  leaned  on  it  affectionately  as  she 
descended. 

"This  gentleman  has  been  so  perlite  to  me,  James,"  said  she. 
James  touched  his  hat ;  the  beau  clapped  him  on  the  shoulder, 
' '  Ah  !  you  are  not  a  hauppy  man, — are  you  ?  Oh  no,  not  at  all 
a  hauppy  man  !  Good-day  to  you !  Guard,  that  hat-box  is 
mine  !  " 

While  Philip  was  paying  the  coachman,  the  beau  passed,  and 
whispered  him: 

"Recollect  old  Gregg;  anything  on  the  lay  here;  don't  spoil 
my  sport  if  we  meet!"  and  bustled  off  into  the  inn.  whistling 
"  God  save  the  king!  " 


NJGHT  AND   MORNING.  12$ 

Philip  started,  then  tried  to  bring  to  mind  the  faces  which  he 
had  seen  at  the  "strange  place"  and  thought  he  recalled  the 
features  of  his  fellow-traveller.  However,  he  did  not  seek  to  renew 
the  acquaintance,  but  inquired  the  way  to  Mr.  Morton's  house, 
and  thither  he  now  proceeded. 

He  was  directed,  as  a  short  cut,  down  one  of  those  narrow  pas- 
sages at  the  entrance  of  which  posts  are  placed,  as  an  indication 
that  they  are  appropriated  solely  to  foot-passengers.  A  dead 
white  wall,  which  screened  the  garden  of  the  physician 
of  the  place  ran  on  one  side;  a  high-fence  to  a  nursery- 
ground  was  on  the  other ;  the  passage  was  lonely,  for  it  was  now 
the  hour  when  few  persons  walk  either  for  business  or  pleasure  in 
a  provincial  town,  and  no  sound  was  heard  save  the  fall  of  his 
own  step  on  the  broad  flag-stones.  At  the  end  of  the  passage  in 
the  main  street  to  which  it  led,  he  saw  already  the  large,  smart, 
showy  shop,  with  the  hot  sun  shining  full  on  the  gilt  letters  that 
conveyed  to  the  eyes  of  the  customer  the  respectable  name  of 
"  Morton," — when  suddenly,  the  silence  was  broken  by  choked 
and  painful  sobs.  He  turned,  and  beneath  a  compo  portico,  jut- 
ting from  the  wall,  which  adorned  the  physician's  door,  he  saw 
a  child  seated  on  the  stone  steps  weeping  bitterly;  a  thrill  shot 
through  Philip's  heart !  Did  he  recognize,  disguised  as  it  was  by 
pain  and  sorrow,  that  voice  ?  He  paused,  and  laid  his  hand  on 
the  child's  shoulder:  "Oh,  don't — don't — pray  don't — I  am 
going,  I  am  indeed  !  "  cried  the  child,  quailing,  and  still  keeping 
his  hands  clasped  before  his  face. 

"Sidney  !  "  said  Philip.  The  boy  started  to  his  feet,  uttered  a 
cry  of  rapturous  joy,  and  fell  upon  his  brother's  breast. 

"O,  Philip  I—dear,  dear  Philip!  you  are  come  to  take  me 
away  back  to  my  own — own  mamma ;  I  will  be  so  good,  I  will 
never  tease  her  again,  never,  never !  I  have  been  so  wretched  !  " 

"Sit  down,  and  tell  me  what  they  have  done  to  you,"  said 
Philip,  checking  the  rising  heart  that  heaved  at  his  mother's 
name. 

So,  there  they  sat,  on  the  cold  stone  under  the  stranger's  porch, 
these  two  orphans :  Philip's  arm  round  his  brother's  waist,  Sid- 
ney leaning  on  his  shoulder,  and  imparting  to  him — perhaps  with 
pardonable  exaggeration — all  the  sufferings  he  had  gone  through ; 
and,  when  he  came  to  that  morning's  chastisement,  and  showed 
the  wale  across  the  little  hands  which  he  had  vainly  held  up  in 
supplication,  Philip's  passion  shook  him  from  limb  to  limb.  His 
impulse  was  to  march  straight  into  Mr.  Morton's  shop  and  gripe 
him  by  the  throat ;  and  the  indignation  he  betrayed  encouraged 
Sidney  to  color  yet  more  highly  the  tale  of  his  wrongs  and  pain. 


124  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

When  he  had  done,  and  clinging  tightly  to  his  brother's  broad 
chest,  said  : 

"  But  never  mind,  Philip;  now  we  will  go  home  to  mamma." 

Philip  replied ; 

"  Listen  to  me,  my  dear  brother.  We  cannot  go  back  to  our 
mother.  I  will  tell  you  why,  later.  We  are  alone  in  the  world — we 
two  !  If  you  will  come  with  me — God  help  you  ! — for  you  will 
have  many  hardships  :  we  shall  have  to  work  and  drudge,  and  you 
may  be  cold  and  hungry,  and  tired,  very  often,  Sidney — very, 
very  often  !  But  you  know  that,  long  ago,  when  I  was  so  pas- 
sionate, I  never  was  wilfully  unkind  to  you  ;  and  I  declare  now, 
that  I  would  bite  out  my  tongue  rather  than  it  should  say  a  harsh 
word  to  you.  That  is  all  I  can  promise.  Think  well.  Will  you 
never  miss  all  the  comforts  you  have  now  ! ' ' 

''Comforts!"  repeated  Sidney,  ruefully,  and  looking  at  the 
wale  over  his  hands.  ' '  Oh  !  let — let — let  me  go  with  you :  I  shall 
die  if  I  stay  here.  I  shall,  indeed — indeed  !  " 

"Hush  !  "  said  Philip;  for  at  that  moment  a  step  was  heard, 
and  the  pale  gentleman  walked  slowly  down  the  passage,  and 
started,  and  turned  his  head  wistfully  as  he  looked  at  the  boys. 

When  he  was  gone,  Philip  rose. 

"It  is  settled,  then,"  said  he,  firmly.  "Come  with  me  at 
once.  You  shall  return  to  their  roof  no  more.  Come,  quick : 
we  shall  have  many  miles  to  go  to-night." 

CHAPTER  VI. 

"  He  comes 

Yet  careless  what  he  brings ;  his  one  concern 
Is  to  conduct  it  to  the  destined  inn ; 

And  having  dropp'd  the  expected  bag,  pass  on 

To  him  indifferent  whether  grief  or  joy." 

COWPER:  Descripton  of  the  Postman. 

THE  pale  gentleman  entered  Mr.  Morton's  shop ;  and  looking 
round  him,  spied  the  worthy  trader  showing  shawls  to  a  young 
lady  just  married.  He  seated  himself  on  a  stool,  and  said  to  the 
bowing  foreman  : 

"  I  will  wait  till  Mr.  Morton  is  disengaged." 

The  young  lady  having  closely  examined  seven  shawls,  and 
declared  they  were  beautiful,  said,  "  she  would  think  of  it,"  and 
walked  away.  Mr.  Morton  now  approached  the  stranger. 

"  Mr.  Morton,"  said  the  pale  gentleman;  "you  are  very  little 
altered.  You  do  not  recollect  me  ?  " 

' '  Bless  me,  Mr.  Spencer  !  is  it  really  you  ?     Well,  what  a  time 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  125 

since  we  met  !     I  am  very  glad  to  see  you.     And  what  brings  you 

to  N ?     Business?  " 

"Yes,  business.     Let  us  go  within." 

Mr.  Morton  led  the  way  to  the  parlor,  where  Master  Tom, 
reperched  on  the  stool,  was  rapidly  digesting  the  plundered 
muffin.  Mr.  Morton  dismissed  him  to  play,  and  the  pale  gentle- 
man took  a  chair. 

"Mr.  Morton,"  said  he,  glancing  over  his  dress,  "you  see  I 
am  in  mourning.  It  is  for  your  sister.  I  never  got  the  better  of  that 
early  attachment — never." 

"  My  sister !  Good  Heavens  !  "  said  Mr.  Morton,  turning  very 
pale ;  "is  she  dead ?  Poor  Catherine  !  and  I  not  know  of  it ! 
When  did  she  die?" 

' '  Not  many  days  since ;  and — and — ' '  said  Mr.  Spencer, 
greatly  affected,  "I  fear  in  want.  I  had  been  abroad  for  some 
months;  on  my  return  last  week,  looking  over  the  newspapers 
(for  I  always  order  them  to  be  filed),  I  i-ead  the  short  account  of 
her  lawsuit  against  Mr.  Beaufort,  some  time  back.  I  resolved  to 
find  her  out.  I  did  so  through  the  solicitor  she  employed :  it  was 
too  late ;  I  arrived  at  her  lodgings  two  days  after  her — her  burial. 
I  then  determined  to  visit  poor  Catherine's  brother,  and  learn  if 
anything  could  be  done  for  the  children  she  had  left  behind." 
"She  left  but  two.  Philip,  the  elder,  is  very  comfortably 

placed  at  R ;  the  younger  has  his  home  with  me  ;  and  Mrs. 

Morton  is  a  moth — that  is  to  say,  she  takes  great  pains  with  him. 
Ehem  !     And  my  poor — poor  sister  ! ' ' 
"Is  he  like  his  mother?" 

"  Very  much,  when  she  was  young  ;  poor  dear  Catherine !  " 
"What  age  is  he?" 

"About  ten,  perhaps;  I  don't  know  exactly;  much  younger 
than  the  other.  And  so  she's  dead  !  " 

"Mr.  Morton,  I  am  an  old  bachelor"  (here  a  sickly  smile 
crossed  Mr.  Spencer's  face);  "a  small  portion  of  my  fortune  is 
settled,  it  is  true,  on  my  relations ;  but  the  rest  is  mine,  and  I 
live  within  my  income.  The  elder  of  these  boys  is  probably  old 
enough  to  begin  to  take  care  of  himself.  But,  the  younger — per- 
haps you  have  a  family  of  your  own,  and  can  spare  him  ?  " 
Mr.  Morton  hesitated,  and  twitched  up  his  trousers. 
"  Why,"  said  he,  "this  is  very  kind  in  you.  I  don't  know — 
we'll  see.  The  boy  is  out  now  ;  come  and  dine  with  us  at  two  ; 
pot-luck.  Well,  so  she  is  no  more  !  Heigho!  Meanwhile,  I'l/ 
talk  it  over  with  Mrs.  M." 

"  I  will  be  with  you,"  said  Mr.  Spencer,  rising. 


126  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"Ah!"  sighed  Mr.  Morton,  "if  Catherine  had  but  married 
you,  she  would  have  been  a  happy  woman." 

"  I  would  have  tried  to  make  her  so,"  said  Mr.  Spencer,  as  he 
turned  away  his  face,  and  took  his  departure. 

Two  o'clock  came;  but  no  Sidney.  They  had  sent  to  the 
place  whither  he  had  been  despatched ;  he  had  never  arrived 
there.  Mr.  Morton  grew  alarmed ;  and,  when  Mr.  Spencer  came 
to  dinne  ,  his  host  was  gone  in  search  of  the  truant.  He  did  not 
return  till  three.  Doomed  that  day  to  be  belated  both  at  break- 
fast and  dinner,  this  decided  him  to  part  with  Sidney  whenever 
he  should  be  found.  Mrs.  Morton  was  persuaded  that  the  child 
only  sulked,  and  would  come  back  fast  enough  when  he  was 
hungry.  Mr.  Spencer  tried  to  believe  her,  and  ate  his  mutton, 
which  was  burnt  to  a  cinder ;  but,  when  five,  six,  seven  o'clock 
came,  and  the  boy  was  still  missing,  even  Mrs.  Morton  agreed 
that  it  was  high  time  to  institute  a  regular  search.  The  whole 
family  set  off  different  ways.  It  was  ten  o'clock  before  they  were 
re-united  ;  and  then,  all  the  news  picked  up  was,  that  a  boy, 
answering  Sidney's  description,  had  been  seen  with  a  young  man 
in  three  several  parts  of  the  town ;  the  last  time  at  the  outskirts, 
on  the  highroad  towards  the  manufacturing  districts.  These  tid- 
ings so  far  relieved  Mr.  Morton's  mind  that  he  dismissed  the  chil- 
ling fear  that  had  crept  there,  that  Sidney  might  have  drowned 
himself.  Boys  will  drown  themselves  sometimes  !  The  descrip- 
tion of  the  young  man  coincided  so  remarkably  with  the  fellow- 
passenger  of  Mr.  Spencer,  that  he  did  not  doubt  it  was  the  same ; 
the  more  so,  when  he  recollected  having  seen  him  with  a  fair- 
haired  child  under  the  portico ;  and,  yet  more,  when  he  recalled 
the  likeness  to  Catherine  that  had  struck  him  in  the  coach,  and 
caused  the  inquiry  that  had  roused  Philip's  suspicion.  The 
mystery  was  thus  made  clear — Sidney  had  fled  with  his  brother. 
Nothing  more,  however,  could  be  done  that  night.  The  next 
morning,  active  measures  should  be  devised  ;  and  when  the  morn- 
ing came,  the  mail  brought  to  Mr.  Morton  the  two  following 
letters.  The  first  was  from  Arthur  Beaufort. 

"  SIR  :  I  have  been  prevented  by  severe  illness  from  writing  to 
you  before.  I  can  now  scarcely  hold  a  pen :  but  the  instant  my 
health  is  recovered  I  shall  be  with  you  at  N . 

"  On  her  deathbed,  the  mother  of  the  boy  under  your  charge, 
Sidney  Morton,  committed  him  solemnly  to  me.  I  make  his  for- 
tunes my  care,  and  shall  hasten  to  claim  him  at  your  kindly  hands. 
But  the  elder  son, — this  poor  Philip,  who  has  suffered  so  unjustly, 
— for  our  lawyer  has  seen  Mr.  Plaskwith  and  heard  the  whole 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  127 

story  ;  what  has  become  of  him  ?  All  our  inquiries  have  failed  to 
track  him.  Alas,  I  was  too  ill  to  institute  them  myself  while  it 
was  yet  time.  Perhaps  he  may  have  sought  shelter  with  you,  his 
uncle :  if  so,  assure  him  that  he  is  in  no  danger  from  the  pursuit 
of  the  law  ;  that  his  innocence  is  fully  recognized  ;  and  that  my 
father  and  myself  implore  him  to  accept  our  affection.  I  can 
write  no  more  now;  but  in  a  few  days  I  shall  hope  to  see  you. 

"  I  am,  sir,  etc., 

^ARTHUR  BEAUFORT. 

"  Berkeley  Square." 
The  second  letter  was  from  Mr.  Plaskwith,  and  ran  thus 

' '  DEAR  MORTON  :  Something  very  awkward  has  happened, — 
not  my  fault,  and  very  unpleasant  for  me.  Your  relation,  Philip, 
as  I  wrote  you  word,  was  a  painstaking  lad,  though  odd  and  bad 
mannered  ;  for  want,  perhaps,  poor  boy  !  of  being  taught  better ; 
and  Mrs.  P.  is,  you  know,  a  very  genteel  woman — women  go  too 
much  by  manners — so  she  never  took  much  to  him.  However, 
to  the  point,  as  the  French  emperor  used  to  say  :  one  evening  he 
asked  me  for  money  for  his  mother,  who,  he  said,  was  ill,  in  a 
very  insolent  way  :  I  may  say  threatening.  It  was  in  my  own 
shop,  and  before  Plimmins  and  Mrs.  P.;  I  was  forced  to  answer 
with  dignified  rebuke,  and  left  the  shop.  When  I  returned,  he 
was  gone,  and  some  shillings — fourteen  I  think,  and  three  sover- 
eigns— evidently  from  the  till,  scattered  on  the  floor.  Mrs.  P. 
and  Mr.  Plimmins  were  very  much  frightened ;  thought  it  was 
clear  I  was  robbed,  and  that  we  were  to  be  murdered.  Plimmins 
slept  below  that  night,  and  we  borrowed  butcher  Johnson's  dog. 
Nothing  happened.  I  did  not  think  I  was  robbed ;  because  the 
money,  when  we  came  to  calculate,  was  all  right.  I  know  human 
nature:  he  had  thought  to  take  it,  but  repented — quite  clear.  How- 
ever, I  was  naturally  very  angry,  thought  he'd  come  back  again ; 
meant  to  reprove  him  properly ;  waited  several  days ;  heard  noth- 
ing of  him ;  grew  uneasy ;  would  not  attend  longer  to  Mrs.  P. ; 
for,  as  Napoleon  Bonaparte  observed,  '  women  are  well  in  their 
way,  not  in  ours,'1  Made  Plimmins  go  with  me  to  town — hired  a 
Bow  Street  runner  to  track  him  out — cost  me  £i.  is.  and  two 
glasses  of  brandy-and-water.  Poor  Mrs.  Morton  was  just  buried 
— quite  shocked  !  Suddenly  saw  the  boy  in  the  streets.  Plim- 
mins rushed  forward  in  the  kindest  way — was  knocked  down — 
hurt  his  arm — paid  2s.  6d.  for  lotion.  Philip  ran  off,  we  ran  af- 
ter him — could  not  find  him.  Forced  to  return  home.  Next  day, 
a  lawyer  from  a  Mr.  Beaufort — Mr.  George  Blackwell,  a  gentle- 
man-like man — called,  Mr.  Beaufort  will  do  anything  for  him 


128  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

in  reason.  Is  there  anything  more  /  can  do  ?  I  really  am  very 
uneasy  about  the  lad,  and  Mrs.  P.  and  I  have  a  tiff  about  it :  but 
that's  nothing  ;  thought  I  had  best  write  to  you  for  instructions. 

' '  Yours  truly, 

"C.  PLASKWITH. 

"  P.S. — Just  open  my  letter  to  say,  Bow  Street  officer  just 
been  here — has  found  out  that  the  boy  has  been  seen  with  a  very  sus- 
picious character,  they  think  he  has  left  London.  Bow  Street  offi- 
cer wants  to  go  after  him — very  expensive :  so  now  you  can  decide. ' ' 

Mr.  Spencer  scarcely  listened  to  Mr.  Plaskwith's  letter,  but  of 
Arthur's  he  felt  jealous.  He  would  fain  have  been  the  only  pro- 
tector to  Catherine's  children;  but  he  was  the  last  man  fitted  to 
head  the  search,  now  so  necessary  to  prosecute  with  equal  tact  and 
energy. 

A  soft-hearted,  soft-headed  man,  a  confirmed  valetudinarian,  a 
day  dreamer,  who  had  wasted  away  his  life  in  dawdling  and  maun- 
dering over  Simple  Poetry,  and  sighing  over  his  unhappy  attach- 
ment ;  no  child,  no  babe,  was  more  thoroughly  helpless  than  Mr. 
Spencer. 

The  task  of  investigation  devolved,  therefore,  on  Mr.  Morton, 
and  he  went  about  it  in  a  regular,  plain,  straight-forward  way. 
Hand-bills  were  circulated,  constables  employed,  and  a  lawyer, 
accompanied  by  Mr.  Spencer,  despatched  to  the  manufacturing 
districts ;  towards  which  the  orphans  had  been  seen  to  direct 
their  path. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

"  Give  the  gentle  South 
Yet  leave  to  court  those  sails." 

BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  :  Beggar's  Bush. 
"  Cut  your  cloth,  sir, 
According  to  your  calling." — Ibid. 

MEANWHILE  the  brothers  were  far  away,  and  He  who  feeds  the 
young  ravens  made  their  paths  pleasant  to  their  feet.  Philip  had 
broken  to  Sidney  the  sad  news  of  their  mother's  death,  and  Sidney 
had  wept  with  bitter  passion.  But  children, — what  can  they  know 
of  death  ?  Their  tears  over  graves  dry  sooner  than  the  dews.  It  is 
melancholy  to  compare  the  depth,  the  endurance,  the  far-sighted, 
anxious,  prayerful  love  of  a  parent,  with  the  inconsiderate,  frail, 
and  evanescent  affection  of  the  infant,  whose  eyes  the  hues  of  the 
butterfly  yet  dazzle  with  delight.  It  was  the  night  of  their  flight, 
and  in  the  open  ftir,  when  Philip  (his  arms  round  Sidney's  waist) 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  129 

told  his  brother-orphan  that  they  were  motherless.  And  the  air 
was  balmy,  the  skies  filled  with  the  effulgent  presence  of  the 
August  moon ;  the  corn-fields  stretched  round  them  wide  and  far, 
and  not  a  leaf  trembled  on  the  beech-tree  beneath  which  they 
had  sought  shelter.  It  seemed  as  if  Nature  herself  smiled  pity- 
ingly on  their  young  sorrow,  and  said  to  them,  "  Grieve  not  for 
the  dead  :  I,  who  live  for  ever,  I  will  be  your  mother  !  " 

They  crept,  as  the  night  deepened,  into  the  warmer  sleeping- 
place  afforded  by  stacks  of  hay,  mown  that  summer  and  still  fra- 
grant. And  the  next  morning  the  birds  woke  them  betimes,  to 
feel  that  Liberty,  at  least,  was  with  them,  and  to  wander  with  her 
at  will. 

Who  in  his  boyhood  has  not  felt  the  delight  of  freedom  and 
adventure  ?  To  have  the  world  of  woods  and  sward  before  him  j 
to  escape  restriction ;  to  lean,  for  the  first  time,  on  his  own 
resources ;  to  rejoice  in  the  wild  but  manly  luxury  of  indepen- 
dence— to  act  the  Crusoe, — and  to  fancy  a  Friday  in  every  foot- 
print— an  island  of  his  own  in  every  field  ?  Yes,  in  spite  of  their 
desolation,  their  loss,  of  the  melancholy  past,  of  the  friendless 
future,  the  orphans  were  happy — happy  in  their  youth,  their  free- 
dom, their  love,  their  wanderings  in  the  delicious  air  of  the  glori- 
ous August.  Sometimes  they  came  upon  knots  of  reapers  linger- 
ing in  the  shade  of  the  hedgerows  over  their  noon-day  meal ; 
and,  grown  sociable  by  travel,  and  bold  by  safety,  they  joined 
and  partook  of  the  rude  fare  with  the  zest  of  fatigue  and  youth. 
Sometimes,  too,  at  night,  they  saw  gleam  afar  and  red  by  the 
wood-side  the  fires  of  gypsy  tents.  But  these,  with  the  supersti- 
tion derived  from  old  nursery  tales,  they  scrupulously  shunned, 
eyeing  them  with  a  mysterious  awe !  What  heavenly  twilights 
belong  to  that  golden  month !  the  air  so  lucidly  serene,  as  the 
purple  of  the  clouds  fades  gradually  away,  and  up  soars,  broad, 
round,  intense,  and  luminous,  the  full  moon  which  belongs  to 
the  joyous  season !  The  fields  then  are  greener  than  in  the  heats 
of  July  and  June ;  they  have  got  back  the  luxury  of  a  second 
spring.  And  still,  beside  the  paths  of  the  travellers,  lingered  on 
the  hedges  the  clustering  honeysuckle — the  convolvulus  glittered 
in  the  tangles  of  the  brake — the  hardy  heath-flower  smiled  on  the 
green  waste. 

And  ever,  at  evening,  they  came,  field  after  field,  upon  those 
circles  which  recall  to  children  so  many  charmed  legends,  and  are 
fresh  and  frequent  in  that  month — the  Fairy  Rings !  They 
thought,  poor  boys  !  that  it  was  a  good  omen,  and  half  fancied 
that  the  Fairies  protected  them,  as  in  the  old  time  they  had  often 
protected  the  desolate  and  outcast. 

9 


130  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

They  avoided  the  main  roads,  and  all  towns,  with  suspicious 
care.  But  sometimes  they  paused,  for  food  and  rest,  at  the 
obscure  hostels  of  some  scattered  hamlet :  though,  more  often, 
they  loved  to  spread  the  simple  food  they  purchased  by  the  way, 
under  some  thick  tree,  or  beside  a  stream  through  whose  limpid 
waters  they  could  watch  the  trout  glide  and  play.  And  they 
often  preferred  the  chance-shelter  of  a  haystack,  or  a  shed,  to  the 
less  romantic  repose  offered  by  the  small  inns  they  alone  dared  to 
enter.  They  went  in  this  much  by  the  face  and  voice  of  the 
host  or  hostess.  Once  only  Philip  had  entered  a  town,  on  the 
second  day  of  their  flight,  and  that  solely  for  the  purchase  of 
ruder  clothes,  and  a  change  of  linen  for  Sidney,  with  some 
articles  and  implements  of  use  necessary  in  their  present  course 
of  shift  and  welcome  hardship.  A  wise  precaution;  for,  thus 
clad,  they  escaped  suspicion. 

So  journeying,  they  consumed  several  days;  and,  having  taken 
a  direction  quite  opposite  to  that  which  led  to  the  manufacturing 
districts,  whither  pursuit  had  been  directed,  they  were  now  in  the 
centre  of  another  county — in  the  neighborhood  of  one  of  the 
most  considerable  towns  of  England ;  and  here  Philip  began  to 
think  their  wanderings  ought  to  cease,  and  it  was  time  to  settle  on 
some  definite  course  of  life.  He  had  carefully  hoarded  about  his 
person,  and  most  thriftily  managed,  the  little  fortune  bequeathed 
by  his  mother.  But  Philip  looked  on  this  capital  as  a  deposit 
sacred  to  Sidney ;  it  was  not  to  be  spent,  but  kept  and  augmented ; 
the  nucleus  for  future  wealth.  Within  the  last  few  weeks  his 
character  was  greatly  ripened,  and  his  powers  of  thought  enlarged. 
He  was  no  more  a  boy, — he  was  a  man  :  he  had  another  life  to 
take  care  of.  He  resolved,  then,  to  enter  the  town  they  were 
approaching,  and  to  seek  for  some  situation  by  which  he  might 
maintain  both.  Sidney  was  very  loath  to  abandon  their  present 
roving  life ;  but  he  allowed  that  the  warm  weather  could  not 
always  last,  and  that  in  winter  the  fields  would  be  less  pleasant. 
He,  therefore,  with  a  sigh,  yielded  to  his  brother's  reasonings. 

They  entered  the  fair  and  busy  town  of one  day  at  noon ; 

and,  after  finding  a  small  lodging,  at  which  he  deposited  Sidney, 
who  was  fatigued  with  their  day's  walk,  Philip  sallied  forth  alone. 

After  his  long  rambling,  Philip  was  pleased  and  struck  with  the 
broad  bustling  streets,  the  gay  shops,  the  evidences  of  opulence 
and  trade.  He  thought  it  hard  if  he  could  not  find  there  a 
market  for  the  health  and  heart  of  sixteen.  He  strolled  slowly 
and  alone  along  the  streets,  till  his  attention  was  caught  by  a 
small  corner-shop,  in  the  window  of  which  was  placed  a  board, 
bearing  this  inscription ; 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  131 

"OFFICE  FOR  EMPLOYMENT. — RECIPROCAL   ADVANTAGE. 

"  Mr.  John  Clump's  bureau  open  every  day,  from  ten  till  four. 
Clerks,  servants,  laborers,  etc.,  provided  with  suitable  situations. 
Terms  moderate.  N.  B. — The  oldest  established  office  in  the 
town. 

"  Wanted,  a  good  cook.     An  under  gardener." 

What  he  sought  was  here  !  Philip  entered,  and  saw  a  short, 
fat  man  with  spectacles,  seated  before  a  desk,  poring  upon  the 
well  filled  leaves  of  a  long  register. 

"Sir,"  said  Philip,  "  I  wish  for  a  situation ;  I  don't  care  what." 

"  Half-a-crown  for  entry,  if  you  please.  That's  right.  Now 
for  particulars.  Hum  ! — you  'don't  look  like  a  servant !  " 

"  No ;  I  wish  for  any  place  where  my  education  can  be  of  use. 
I  can  read  and  write ;  I  know  Latin  and  French ;  I  can  draw ; 
I  know  arithmetic  and  summing." 

"Very  well;  very  genteel  young  man — prepossessing  appear- 
ance (that's  a  fudge  ! ) — highly  educated  ;  usher  in  a  school — eh  ? ' ' 

"  What  you  like." 

' '  References  ? ' ' 

"I  have  none." 

"Eh!  none!"  and  Mr.  Clump  fixed  his  spectacles  full  upon 
Philip. 

Philip  was  prepared  for  the  question,  and  had  the  sense  to  per- 
ceive that  a  frank  reply  was  his  best  policy.  "  The  fact  is,"  said 
he,  boldly,  "  I  was  well  brought  up  ;  my  father  died  ;  I  was  to 
be  bound  apprentice  to  a  trade  I  disliked ;  I  left  it,  and  have  now 
no  friends." 

"  If  I  can  help  you,  I  will,"  said  Mr.  Clump  coldly.  "  Can't 
promise  much.  If  you  were  a  laborer,  character  might  not 
matter ;  but  educated  young  men  must  have  a  character.  Hands 
always  more  useful  than  head.  Education  no  avail  nowadays ; 
common,  quite  common.  Call  again  on  Monday." 

Somewhat  disappointed  and  chilled,  Philip  turned  from  the 
bureau ;  but  he  had  a  strong  confidence  in  his  own  resources,  and 
recovered  his  spirits  as  he  mingled  with  the  throng.  He  passed, 
at  length,  by  a  livery-stable,  and  paused,  from  old  associations, 
as  he  saw  a  groom  in  the  mews  attempting  to  manage  a  young, 
hot  horse,  evidently  unbroken.  The  master  of  the  stables,  in  a 
green  short  jacket,  and  top-boots,  with  a  long  whip  in  his  hand, 
was  standing  by,  with  one  or  two  men  who  looked  like  horse 
dealers. 

"  Come  off,  clumsy  !  you  can't  manage  that  'ere  fine  hanimal," 


I J2  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

cried  the  liveryman.  "  Ah  !  he's  a  lamb,  sir,  if  he  were  backed 
properly.  But  I  has  not  a  man  in  the  yard  as  can  ride,  since  Will 
died.  Come  off,  I  say,  lubber  !  " 

But  to  come  off,  without  being  thrown  off,  was  more  easily  said 
than  done.  The  horse  was  now  plunging  as  if  Juno  had  sent  her 
gad-fly  to  him ;  and  Philip,  interested  and  excited,  came  near 
and  nearer,  till  he  stood  by  the  side  of  the  horse-dealers.  The 
other  ostlers  ran  to  the  help  of  their  comrade,  who,  at  last,  with 
white  lips  and  shaking  knees  found  himself  on  terra  firma ;  while 
the  horse,  snorting  hard,  and  rubbing  his  head  against  the  breast 
and  arms  of  the  ostler  who  held  him  tightly  by  the  rein,  seemed 
to  ask,  in  his  own  way,  "  Are  there  any  more  of  you  ?  " 

A  suspicion  that  the  horse  was  an  old  acquaintance  crossed; 
Philip's  mind  ;  he  went  up  to  him,  and  a  white  spot  over  the  left 
eye  confirmed  his  doubts.  It  had  been  a  foal  reserved  and  reared 
for  his  own  riding ;  one  that,  in  his  prosperous  days,  had  ate 
bread  from  his  hand,  and  followed  him  round  the  paddock  like  a 
dog  ;  one  that  he  had  mounted  in  sport,  without  saddle,  when  his 
father's  back  was  turned ;  a  friend,  in  short,  of  the  happy  lang 
syne ;  nay,  the  very  friend  to  whom  he  had  boasted  his  affection, 
when,  standing  with  Arthur  Beaufort  under  the  summer  sky,  the 
whole  world  seemed  to  him  full  of  friends.  He  put  his  hand  on 
the  horse's  neck,  and  whispered,  "  Soho  !  So,  Billy  !  "  and  the 
horse  turned  sharp  round  with  a  quick  joyous  neigh. 

"  If  you  please,  sir,"  said  Philip,  appealing  to  the  liveryman, 
"  I  will  undertake  to  ride  this  horse,  and  take  him  over  yon  leap- 
ing-bar.  Just  let  me  try  him." 

"There's  a  fine-spirited  lad  for  you!"  said  the  liveryman, 
much  pleased  at  the  offer.  "  Now,  gentlemen,  did  I  not  tell  you 
that  'ere  hanimal  had  no  vice  if  he  was  properly  managed  ?  " 

The  horse-dealers  shook  their  heads. 

' '  May  I  give  him  some  bread  first  ? ' '  asked  Philip ;  and  the 
ostler  was  despatched  to  the  house.  Meanwhile  the  animal 
evinced  various  signs  of  pleasure  and  recognition,  as  Philip  stroked 
and  talked  to  him ;  and,  finally,  when  he  ate  the- bread  from  the 
young  man's  hand,  the  whole  yard  seemed  inasmuch  delight  and 
surprise  as  if  they  had  witnessed  one  of  Monsieur  Van  Amburgh's 
exploits. 

And  now,  Philip,  still  caressing  the  horse,  slowly  and  cau- 
tiously mounted ;  the  animal  made  one  bound  half-across  the 
yard — a  bound  which  sent  all  the  horse-dealers  into  a  corner — 
and  then  went  through  his  paces,  one  after  the  other,  with  as 
much  ease  and  calm  as  if  he  had  been  broke  in  at  Mr.  Fozard's 
to  carry  a  young  lady.  And  when  he  crowned  all  by  going  thrice 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  133 

over  the  leaping-bar,  and  Philip,  dismounting,  threw  the  reins  to 
the  ostler,  and  turned  triumphantly  to  the  horse-dealer,  that  gen- 
tleman slapped  him  on  the  back,  and  said,  emphatically,  "Sir, 
you  are  a  man  !  and  I  am  proud  to  see  you  here." 

Meanwhile  the  horse-dealers  gathered  round  the  animal ;  looked 
at  his  hoofs,  felt  his  legs,  examined  his  windpipe,  and  concluded 
the  bargain,  which,  but  for  Philip,  would  have  been  very  abruptly 
broken  off.  When  the  horse  was  led  out  of  the  yard,  the  livery- 
man, Mr.  Stubmore,  turned  to  Philip,  who,  leaning  against  the 
wall,  followed  the  poor  animal  with  mournful  eyes. 

"  My  good  sir,  you  have  sold  that  horse  for  me — that  you  have  ! 
Anything  as  I  can  do  for  you  ?  One  good  turn  deserves  another. 
Here's  a  brace  of  shiners." 

"Thank  you,  sir!  I  want  no  money,  but  I  do  want  some 
employment.  I  can  be  of  use  to  you,  perhaps,  in  your  establish- 
ment. I  have  been  brought  up  among  horses  all  my  life." 

"Saw  it,  sir!  that's  very  clear.  I  say,  that 'ere  horse  knows 
you  !  "  and  the  dealer  put  his  finger  to  his  nose.  "  Quite  right 
to  be  mum  !  He  was  bred  by  an  old  customer  of  mine — famouf 
rider ! — Mr.  Beaufort.  Aha  !  that's  where  you  knew  him,  7 
'spose.  Were  you  in  his  stables?  " 

"  Hem — I  knew  Mr.  Beaufort  well." 

"  Did  you?  You  could  not  know  a  better  man.  Well,  I  shall, 
be  very  glad  to  engage  you,  though  you  seem  by  your  hands  to  b^ 
a  bit  of  a  gentleman,  eh  ?  Never  mind ;  don't  want  you  to 
groom ! — but  superintend  things.  D'ye  know  accounts,  eh  ?  " 

"Yes." 

"Character?" 

Philip  repeated  to  Mr.  Stubmore  the  story  he  had  imparted  t< 
Mr.  Clump.  Somehow  or  other,  men  who  live  much  with  horse' 
are  always  more  lax  in  their  notions  than  the  rest  of  mankind 
Mr.  Stubmore  did  not  seem  to  grow  more  distant  at  Philip's  nar 
ration. 

"  Understand  you  perfectly,  my  man.  Brought  up  with  then? 
'ere  fine  creturs,  how  could  you  nail  your  nose  to  a  desk  ?  I'll 
take  you  without  more  palaver.  What's  your  name  ?  ' ' 

"Philips." 

"  Come  to-morrow  and  we'll  settle  about  wages.  Sleep  here?  " 

"No.  I  have  a  brother  whom  I  must  lodge  with,  and  for 
whose  sake  I  wish  to  work.  I  should  not  like  him  to  be  at  the 
stables  ;  he  is  too  young.  But  I  can  come  early  every  day,  and 
go  home  late." 

"Well,  just  as  you  like,  man.     Good  day." 

And  thus,  not  from  any  mental  accomplishment — not  frvui  the 


134  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

result  of  his  intellectual  education,  but  from  the  mere  physical 
capacity  and  brute  habit  of  sticking  fast  on  his  saddle,  did  Philip 
Morton,  in  this  great,  intelligent,  gifted,  civilized,  enlightened 
community  of  Great  Britain,  find  the  means  of  earning  his  bread 
without  stealing  it. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

"  Don  Salluste  (jsourianf).     Je  parle 
Que  vous  ne  pensiez  pas  A  moi  ?  " — Ruy  Bias. 

"Don  Salhtsle.  Cousin! 

"  Don  Cesar.     DC  vos  bienfaits  je  n'aurai  nulle  envie, 
Tant  que  je  trouverai  vivant  ma  libre  vie."* — Ibid. 

PHILIP'S  situation  was  agreeable  to  his  habits.  His  great  cour- 
age and  skill  in  horsemanship  were  not  the  only  qualifications  use- 
ful to  Mr.  Stubmore :  his  education  answered  an  useful  purpose 
in  accounts,  and  his  manners  and  appearance  were  highly  to  the 
credit  of  the  yard.  The  customers  and  loungers  soon  grew  to 
like  Gentleman  Philips,  as  he  was  styled  in  the  establishment. 
Mr.  Stubmore  conceived  a  real  affection  for  him.  So  passed 
several  weeks ;  and  Philip,  in  this  humble  capacity,  might  have 
worked  out  his  destinies  in  peace  and  comfort,  but  for  a  new  cause 
of  vexation  that  arose  in  Sidney.  This  boy  was  all  in  all  to  his 
brother.  For  him  he  had  resisted  the  hearty  and  joyous  invita- 
tions of  Gawtrey  (whose  gay  manner  and  high  spirits  had,  it  must 
be  owned,  captivated  his  fancy,  despite  the  equivocal  mystery  of 
the  man;s  avocations  and  condition)  ;  for  him  he  now  worked  and 
toiled,  cheerful  and  contented  ;  and  him  he  sought  to  save  from 
all  to  which  he  subjected  himself.  He  could  not  bear  that  that 
soft  and  delicate  child  should  ever  be  exposed  to  the  low  and 
menial  associations  that  now  made  up  his  own  life;  to  the  obscene 
slang  of  grooms  and  ostlers ;  to  their  coarse  manners  and  rough 
contact.  He  kept  him,  therefore,  apart  and  aloof  in  their  little 
lodging,  and  hoped  in  time  to  lay  by,  so  that  Sidney  might  ulti- 
mately be  restored,  if  not  to  his  bright  original  sphere,  at  least  to 
a  higher  grade  than  that  to  which  Philip  was  himslf  condemned. 
But  poor  Sidney  could  not  bear  to  be  thus  left  alone ;  to  lose  sight 
of  his  brother  from  daybreak  till  bed-time;  to  have  no  one  to 
amuse  him;  he  fretted  and  pined  away:  all  the  little  inconsiderate 
selfishness,  uneradicated  from  his  breast  by  his  sufferings,  broke 
out  the  more,  the  more  he  felt  that  he  was  the  first  object  on  earth 

*  Don  Saltust  (smiling).     I'll  lay  a  wager  you  won't  think  of  me? 

Don  Sallutt.     Cousin  ! 

Don  CtfSttr.     1  covet  not  your  favors,  so  but  I  lead  an  independent  life. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  135 

to  Philip.  Philip,  thinking  he  might  be  more  cheerful  at  a  day- 
school,  tried  the  experiment  of  placing  him  at  one  where  the  boys 
were  much  of  his  own  age.  But  Sidney,  on  the  third  day,  came 
back  with  a  black  eye,  and  he  would  return  no  more.  Philip 
several  times  thought  of  changing  their  lodging  for  one  where 
there  were  young  people.  But  Sidney  had  taken  a  fancy  to  the 
kind  old  widow  who  was  their  landlady,  and  cried  at  the  thought 
of  removal.  Unfortunately,  the  old  woman  was  deaf  and  rheu- 
matic ;  and  though  she  bore  teasing  ad  libitum,  she  could  not 
entertain  the  child  long  on  a  stretch.  Too  young  to  be  reason- 
able, Sidney  could  not,  or  would  not  comprehend  why  his  brother 
was  so  long  away  from  him;  and  once  he  said,  peevishly: 

"If  I  had  thought  I  was  to  be  moped  up  so,  I  would  not  have 
left  Mrs.  Morton.  Tom  was  a  bad  boy,  but  still  it  was  somebody 
to  play  with.  I  wish  I  had  not  gone  away  with  you  !  " 

This  speech  cut  Philip  to  the  heart.  What,  then,  he  had  taken 
from  the  child  a  respectable  and  safe  shelter — the  sure  provision 
of  a  life — and  the  child  now  reproached  him  !  When  this  was 
said  to  him,  the  tears  gushed  from  his  eyes. 

"  God  forgive  me,  Sidney,"  said  he,  and  turned  away. 

But  then  Sidney,  who  had  the  most  endearing  ways  with  him, 
seeing  his  brother  so  vexed,  ran  up  and  kissed  him,  and  scolded 
himself  for  being  naughty.  Still  the  words  were  spoken,  and 
their  meaning  rankled  deep.  Philip  himself,  too,  was  morbid  in 
his  excessive  tenderness  for  this  boy.  There  is  a  certain  age, 
before  the  love  for  the  sex  commences,  when  the  feeling  of  friend- 
ship is  almost  a  passion.  You  see  it  constantly  in  girls  and  boys 
at  school.  It  is  the  first  vague  craving  of  the  heart  after  the  mas- 
ter food  of  human  life — Love.  It  has  its  jealousies  and  humors 
and  caprices,  like  love  itself.  Philip  was  painfully  acute  to 
Sidney's  affection,  was  jealous  of  every  particle  of  it.  He 
dreaded  lest  his  brother  should  ever  be  torn  from  him. 

He  would  start  from  his  sleep  at  night,  and  go  to  Sidney's  bed 
to  see  that  he  was  there.  He  left  him  in  the  morning  with  fore- 
bodings— he  returned  in  the  dark  with  fear.  Meanwhile  the 
character  of  this  young  man,  so  sweet  and  tender  to  Sidney,  was 
gradually  becoming  more  hard  and  stern  to  others.  He  had  now 
climbed  to  the  post  of  command  in  that  rude  establishment ;  and 
premature  command  in  any  sphere  tends  to  make  men  unsocial 
and  imperious. 

One  day  Mr.  Stubmore  called  him  into  his  own  counting-house, 
where  stood  a  gentleman,  with  one  hand  in  his  coat-pocket,  the 
other  tapping  his  whip  against  his  boot. 

"  Philips,   show  this  gentleman  the  brown  mare.     She  is  a 


136  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

beauty  in  harness,  is  not  she  ?     This  gentleman  wants  a  match 
for  his  pheaton." 

"  She  must  step  very  hoigh,"  said  the  gentleman,  turning 
round ;  and  Philip  recognized  the  beau  in  the  stage-coach. 

The  recognition  was  simultaneous.  The  beau  nodded,  then 
whistled,  and  winked. 

"  Come,  my  man,  I  am  at  your  service,"  said  he. 

Philip,  with  many  misgivings,  followed  him  across  the  yard. 
The  gentleman  then  beckoned  him  to  approach. 

"You,  sir, — moind  I  never  peach — setting  up  here  in  the  hon- 
est line  ?  Dull  work,  honesty, — eh  ?  " 

"Sir,  I  really  don't  know  you." 

"  Daun't  you  recollect  old  Gregg's,  the  evening  you  came  there 
with  jolly  Bill  Gawtrey?  Recollect  that,  eh?" 

Philip  was  mute. 

' '  I  was  among  the  gentlemen  in  the  back-parlor  who  shook 
you  by  the  hand.  Bill's  off  to  France,  then.  I  am  tauking  the 
provinces.  I  want  a  good  horse — the  best  in  the  yard,  moind  ! 
Cutting  such  a  swell  here  !  My  name  is  Captain  de  Burgh 
Smith ;  never  moind  yours,  my  fine  faellow.  Now  then,  out  with 
your  rattlers,  and  keep  your  tongue  in  your  mouth." 

Philip  mechanically  ordered  out  the  brown  mare,  which  Cap- 
tain Smith  did  not  seem  much  to  approve  of ;  and,  after  glancing 
round  the  stables  with  great  disdain  of  the  collection,  he  saunt- 
ered out  of  the  yard  without  saying  more  to  Philip,  though  he 
stopped  and  spoke  a  few  sentences  to  Mr.  Stubmore.  Philip 
hoped  he  had  no  design  of  purchasing,  and  that  he  was  rid,  for 
the  present,  of  so  awkward  a  customer.  Mr.  Stubmore  approached 
Philip. 

"  Drive  over  the  grays  to  Sir  John,"  said  he.  "My  lady  wants 
a  pair  to  job.  A  very  pleasant  man,  that  Captain  Smith.  I  did 
not  know  you  had  been  in  a  yard  before — says  you  were  the  pet 
at  Elmore's,  in  London.  Served  him  many  a  day.  Pleasant 
gentlemanlike  man  !  " 

"Y-e-s!"  said  Philip,  hardly  knowing  what  he  said,  and 
hurrying  back  into  the  stables  to  order  out  the  grays. 

The  place  to  which  he  was  bound  was  some  miles  distant,  and 
it  was  sunset  when  he  returned.  As  he  drove  into  the  main 
street,  two  men  observed  him  closely. 

"That  is  he  !  I  am  almost  sure  it  is,"  said  one. 

"  Oh  !  then  it's  all  smooth  sailing,"  replied  the  other. 

' '  But,  bless  my  eyes  !  you  must  be  mistaken  !  See  whom  he's 
talking  to  now  ! " 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  137 

At  that  moment  Captain  de  Burgh  Smith,  mounted  on  the 
brown  mare,  stopped  Philip, 

"Well,  you  see,  I've  bought  her, — hope  she'll  turn  out  well. 
What  do  you  really  think  she's  worth  ?  Not  to  buy,  but  to  sell  ?  " 

•''Sixty  guineas." 

"  Well,  that's  a  good  day's  work  ;  and  I  owe  it  to  you.  The 
old  faellow  would  not  have  trusted  me  if  you  had  not  served  me 
at  Elmore's, — ha!  ha!  If  he  gets  scent  and  looks  shy  at  you, 
my  lad,  come  to  me.  I'm  at  the  Star  Hotel  for  the  next  few 
days.  I  want  a  tight  faellow  like  you,  and  you  shall  have  a  fair 
percentage.  I'm  none  of  your  stingy  ones.  I  say,  I  hope  this 
devil  is  quiet?  She  cocks  up  her  ears  dawmnably  !  " 

"  Look  you,  sir  !  "  said  Philip,  very  gravely,  and  rising  up  in 
his  break;  "I  know  very  little  of  you,  and  that  little  is  not 
much  to  your  credit.  I  give  you  fair  warning,  that  I  shall  cau- 
tion my  employer  against  you." 

"Will  you,  my  fine  faellow?  then  take  care  of  yourself." 

"  Stay  !  and  if  you  dare  utter  a  word  against  me,"  said  Philip, 
with  that  frown  to  which  his  swarthy  complexion  and  flashing 
eyes  gave  an  expression  of  fierce  power  beyond  his  years,  "you 
will  find  that,  as  I  am  the  last  to  care  for  a  threat,  so  I  am  the 
first  to  resent  an  injury  !  " 

Thus  saying,  he  drove  on.  Captain  Smith  affected  a  cough, 
and  put  his  brown  mare  into  a  canter.  The  two  men  followed 
Philip  as  he  drove  into  the  yard. 

"What  do  you  know  against  the  person  he  spoke  to?"  said 
one  of  them. 

"  Merely  that  he  is  one  of  the  cunningest  swells  on  this  side 
the  Bay,"  returned  the  other.  "  It  looks  bad  for  your  young 
friend." 

The  first  speaker  shook  his  head  and  made  no  reply. 

On  gaining  the  yard,  Philip  found  that  Mr.  Stubmore  had  gone 
out,  and  was  not  expected  home  till  the  next  day.  He  had  some 
relations  who  were  farmers,  whom  he  often  visited ;  to  them  he 
was  probably  gone. 

Philip,  therefore,  deferring  his  intended  caution  against  the 
gay  captain  till  the  morrow,  and  musing  how  the  caution  might 
be  most  discreetly  given,  walked  homeward.  He  had  just  entered 
the  lane  that  led  to  his  lodgings,  when  he  saw  the  two  men  I  have 
spoken  of  on  the  other  side  of  the  street.  The  taller  and  better- 
dressed  of  the  two  left  his  comrade,  and  crossing  over  to  Philip, 
bowed,  and  thus  accosted  him. 

"  Fine  evening,  Mr.  Philip  Morton.  I  am  rejoiced  to  see  you 
at  last.  You  remember  me — Mr.  Blackwell,  Lincoln's  Inn?" 


138  NIGHT  AMD   MORNING. 

"What  is  your  business ?"  said  Philip,  halting,  and  speaking 
short  and  fiercely. 

"Now  don't  be  in  a  passion,  my  dear  sir,  now  don't.  I  am 
here  on  behalf  of  my  clients,  Messrs.  Beaufort  sen.  and  jun.  I 
have  had  such  work  to  find  you  ?  Dear,  dear  !  but  you  are  a  sly 
one  !  Ha  !  ha  !  Well,  you  see  we  have  settled  that  little  affair 
of  Plaskwith's  for  you  (might  have  been  ugly),  and  now  I  hope 
you  will — " 

"  To  your  business,  sir  !     What  do  you  want  with  me  ?  " 

"Why,  now,  don't  be  so  quick  !  "Pis  not  the  way  to  do  busi- 
ness. Suppose  you  step  to  my  hotel.  A  glass  of  wine,  now,  Mr. 
Philip  !  We  shall  soon  understand  each  other." 

"Out  of  my  path,  or  speak  plainly!  " 

Thus  put  to  it,  the  lawyer,  casting  a  glance  at  his  stout  com- 
panion, who  appeared  to  be  contemplating  the  sunset  on  the  other 
side  of  the  way,  came  at  once  to  the  marrow  of  his  subject. 

''Well,  then,  well, — well,  my  say  is  soon  said.  Mr.  Arthur 
Beaufort  takes  a  most  lively  interest  in  you ;  it  is  he  who  has 
directed  this  inquiry.  He  bids  me  say  that  he  shall  be  most 
happy — yes,  most  happy — to  serve  you  in  anything ;  and  if  you 
will  but  see  him,  he  is  in  the  town,  I  am  sure  you  will  be  charmed 
with  him ;  most  amiable  young  man  !  " 

"Look  you,  sir,"  said  Philip,  drawing  himself  up:  "neither 
from  father,  nor  from  son,  nor  from  one  of  that  family,  on  whose 
heads  rest  the  mother's  death  and  the  orphans'  curse,  will  I  ever 
accept  boon  or  benefit ;  with  them,  voluntarily,  I  will  hold  no 
communion ;  if  they  force  themselves  in  my  path,  let  them  beware  ! 
I  am  earning  my  bread  in  the  way  I  desire ;  I  am  independent ; 
I  want  them  not.  Begone  !  " 

With  that,  Philip  pushed  aside  the  lawyer  and  strode  on  rap- 
idly. Mr.  Blackwell,  abashed  and  perplexed,  returned  to  his 
companion. 

Philip  regained  his  home,  and  found  Sidney  stationed  at  the 
window  alone,  and  with  wistful  eyes  noting  the  flight  of  the  gray 
moths,  as  they  darted  to  and  fro  across  the  dull  shrubs  that,  vari- 
egated with  lines  for  washing,  adorned  the  plot  of  ground  which 
the  landlady  called  a  garden.  The  elder  brother  had  returned 
at  an  earlier  hour  than  usual,  and  Sidney  did  not  at  first  perceive 
him  enter.  When  he  did,  he  clapped  his  hands  and  ran  to  him. 

"This  is  so  good  in  you,  Philip.  I  have  been  so  dull ;  you 
will  come  and  play  now?" 

"With  all  my  heart — where  shall  we  play?  "  said  Philip,  with 
a  cheerful  smile. 

"  Oh,  in  the  garden ! — it's  such  a  nice  time  for  hide  and  seek." 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  139 

"But  is  it  not  chill  and  damp  for  you?  "  said  Philip. 

"  There  now  ;  you  are  always  making  excuses.  I  see  you  don't 
like  it.  I  have  no  heart  to  play  now." 

Sidney  seated  himself  and  pouted. 

"  Poor  Sidney !  you  must  be  dull  without  me.  Yes,  let  us  play ; 
but  put  on  this  handkerchief"  ;  and  Philip  took  off  his  own  cravat 
and  tied  it  round  his  brother's  neck  and  kissed  him. 

Sidney,  whose  anger  seldom  lasted  long,  was  reconciled ;  and 
they  went  into  the  garden  to  play.  It  was  a  little  spot,  screened 
by  an  old  moss-grown  paling,  from  the  neighboring  garden  on  the 
one  side,  and  a  lane  on  the  other.  They  played  with  great  glee 
till  the  night  grew  darker  and  the  dews  heavier. 

"This  must  be  the  last  time,"  cried  Philip.  "It  is  my  turn  to 
hide." 

' '  Very  well !     Now,  then. ' ' 

Philip  secreted  himself  behind  a  poplar ;  and  as  Sidney  searched 
for  him,  and  Philip  stole  round  and  round  the  tree,  the  latter, 
happening  to  look  across  the  paling,  saw  the  dim  outline  of  a 
man's  figure  in  the  lane,  who  appeared  to  be  watching  them.  A 
thrill  shot  across  his  breast.  These  Beauforts,  associated  in  his 
thoughts  with  every  ill  omen  and  augury,  had  they  set  a  spy  upon 
his  movements?  He  remained  erect  and  gazing  at  the  form, 
when  Sidney  discovered,  and  ran  up  to  him,  with  his  noisy  laugh. 

As  the  .child  clung  to  him,  shouting  with  gladness,  Philip, 
unheeding  his  playmate,  called  aloud  and  imperiously  to  the 
stranger : 

"  What  are  you  gaping  at  ?     Why  do  you  stand  watching  us  ?  " 

The  man  muttered  something,  moved  on,  and  disappeared. 

' '  I  hope  there  are  no  thieves  here  !  I  am  so  much  afraid  of 
thieves,"  said  Sidney,  tremulously. 

The  fear  grated  on  Philip's  heart.  Had  he  not  himself,  per- 
haps, been  judged  and  treated  as  a  thief?  He  said  nothing,  but 
drew  his  brother  within ;  and  there,  in  their  little  room,  by  the 
one  poor  candle,  it  was  touching  and  beautiful  to  see  these  boys 
— the  tender  patience  of  the  elder  lending  itself  to  every  whim  of 
the  younger ;  now  building  houses  with  cards — now  telling  stories 
of  fairy  and  knight  errant — the  sprightliest  he  could  remember  or 
invent.  At  length,  as  all  was  over,  and  Sidney  was  undressing 
for  the  night,  Philip,  standing  apart,  said  to  him  in  a  mournful 
voice : 

"Are  you  sad  now,  Sidney? " 

"No !  not  when  you  are  with  me;  but  that  is  so  seldom." 

"  Do  you  read  none  of  the  story-books  I  bought  for  you?  " 

"  Sometimes  !  but  one  can't  read  all  day." 


140  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

' '  Ah  !  Sidney,  if  ever  we  should  part,  perhaps  you  will  love 

me  no  longer !  ' ' 

"  Don't  say  so,"  said  Sidney.     "  But  we  shan't  part,  Philip?" 
Philip  sighed,  and  turned  away  as  his  brother  leaped  into  bed. 

Something  whispered  to  him  that  danger  was  near;  and,  as  it 

was,  could  Sidney  grow  up,  neglected  and  uneducated  ?  Was  it 

thus  that  he  was  to  fulfil  his  trust  ? 

CHAPTER  IX. 

"  But  oh,  what  storm  was  in  that  mind ! " — CRABBE  :  Ruth. 

WHILE  Philip  mused,  and  his  brother  fell  into  the  happy  sleep 
of  childhood,  in  a  room  in  the  principal  hotel  of  the  town  sat 
three  persons,  Arthur  Beaufort,  Mr.  Spencer,  and  Mr.  Blackwell. 

"  And  so,"  said  the  first,  "  he  rejected  every  overture  from  the 
Beauforts?" 

"  With  a  scorn  I  cannot  convey  to  you  !  "  replied  the  lawyer. 
"But  the  fact  is,  that  he  is  evidently  a  lad  of  low  habits;  to 
think  of  his  being  a  sort  of  helper  to  a  horse-dealer !  I  suppose, 
sir,  he  was  always  in  the  stables  in  his  father's  time.  Bad  com- 
pany depraves  the  taste  very  soon,  but  that  is  not  the  worst. 
Sharp  declares  that  the  man  he  was  talking  with,  as  I  told  you, 
is  a  common  swindler.  Depend  on  it,  Mr.  Arthur,  he  is  incor- 
rigible ;  all  we  can  do  is  to  save  the  brother." 

"It  is  too  dreadful  to  contemplate!  "  said  Arthur,  who,  still 
ill  and  languid,  reclined  on  a  sofa. 

"It  is,  indeed,"  said  Mr.  Spencer;  "I  am  sure  I  should  not 
know  what  to  do  with  such  a  character ;  but  the  other  poor  child, 
it  would  be  a  mercy  to  get  hold  of  him.1' 

"  Where  is  Mr.  Sharp  ?  "  asked  Arthur. 

"Why,"  said  the  lawyer,  "he  has  followed  Philip  at  a  dis- 
tance to  find  out  his  lodgings,  and  learn  if  his  brother  is  with 
him.  Oh  !  here  he  is !  "  and  Blackwell's  companion  in  the 
earlier  part  of  the  evening  entered. 

"  I  have  found  him  out,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Sharp,  wiping  his  fore- 
head. "  What  a  fierce  'un  he  is  !  I  thought  he  would  have  had 
a  stone  at  my  head ;  but  we  officers  are  used  to  it ;  we  does  our 
duty,  and  Providence  makes  our  heads  unkimmon  hard  !  " 

" Is  the  child  with  him? "  asked  Mr.  Spencer. 

"Yes,  sir." 

"  A  little,  quiet,  subdued  boy?  "  asked  the  melancholy  inhab- 
itant of  the  Lakes. 

"Quiet!    Lord  love  you!  Never  heard  a  noiser  little  urchin  ! 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  14! 

There  they  were,  romping  and  rouping  in  the  garden,  like  a 
couple  of  gaol  birds. ' ' 

' '  You  see, ' '  groaned  Mr.  Spencer,  ' '  he  will  make  that  poor 
child  as  bad  as  himself." 

''What  shall  us  do,  Mr.  Blackwell?"  asked  Sharp,  who 
longed  for  his  brandy-and-water. 

' '  Why,  I  was  thinking  you  might  go  to  the  horse-dealer  the 
first  thing  in  the  morning ;  find  out  whether  Philip  is  really  thick 
with  the  swindler;  and  perhaps  Mr.  Stubmore  may  have  some 
influence  with  him,  if,  without  saying  who  he  is — " 

"Yes,"  interrupted  Arthur,  "  do  not  expose  his  name." 

"  You  could  still  hint  that  he  ought  to  be  induced  to  listen  to 
his  friends  and  go  with  them.  Mr.  Stubmore  may  be  a  respect- 
able man,  and — " 

' '  I  understand, ' '  said  Sharp ;  "I  have  no  doubt  as  how  I  can 
settle  it.  We  learns  to  know  human  natur  in  our  perfession ; 
'cause  why,  we  gets  at  its  blind  side.  Good-night,  gentlemen !  " 

"You  seem  very  pale,  Mr.  Arthur;  you  had  better  go  to  bed : 
you  promised  your  father,  you  know." 

"Yes,  I  am  not  well;  I  will  go  to  bed  " ;  and  Arthur  rose, 
lighted  his  candle,  and  sought  his  room. 

"I  will  see  Philip  to-morrow,"  he  said  to  himself ;  "he  will 
listen  to  me." 

The  conduct  of  Arthur  Beaufort  in  executing  the  charge  he 
had  undertaken,  had  brought  into  full  light  all  the  most  amiable 
and  generous  part  of  his  character.  As  soon  as  he  was  sufficiently 
recovered,  he  had  expressed  so  much  anxiety  as  to  the  fate  of  the 
orphans,  that  to  quiet  him  his  father  was  forced  to  send  for  Mr. 

Blackwell.  The  lawyer  had  ascertained,  through  Dr. ,  "the 

name  of  Philip's  employer  at  R .  At  Arthur's  request  he 

went  down  to  Mr.  Plaskwith ;  and  arriving  there  the  day  after 
the  return  of  the  bookseller,  learned  those  particulars  with  which 
Mr.  Plaskwith's  letter  to  Roger  Morton  has  already  made  the 
reader  acquainted.  The  lawyer  then  sent  for  Mr.  Sharp,  the 
officer  before  employed,  and  commissioned  him  to  track  the 
young  man's  whereabout.  That  shrewd  functionary  soon  reported 
that  a  youth  every  way  answering  to  Philip's  description  had  been 
introduced  the  night  of  the  escape  by  a  man  celebrated,  not 
indeed  for  robberies,  or  larcenies,  or  crimes  of  the  coarser  kind, 
but  for  address  in  all  that  more  large  and  complex  character 
which  comes  under  the  denomination  of  living  upon  one's  wits, 
to  a  polite  rendezvous  frequented  by  persons  of  a  similar  profes- 
sion. Since  then,  however,  all  clue  of  Philip  was  lost.  But 
though  Mr.  Blackwell,  in  the  way  of  his  profession,  was  thus 


142  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

publicly  benevolent  towards  the  fugitive,  he  did  not  the  less  pri- 
vately represent  to  his  patrons,  senior  and  junior,  the  very  equivo- 
cal character  that  Philip  must  be  allowed  to  bear.  Like  most 
lawyers,  hard  upon  all  who  wander  from  the  formal  tracks,  he 
unaffectedly  regarded  Philip's  flight  and  absence  as  proofs  of  a 
very  reprobate  disposition ;  and  this  conduct  was  greatly  aggra- 
vated in  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Sharp's  report,  by  which  it  appeared 
that  after  his  escape  Philip  had  so  suddenly,  and,  as  it  were,  so 
naturally,  taken  to  such  equivocal  companionship.  Mr.  Robert 
Beaufort,  already  prejudiced  against  Philip,  viewed  matters  in 
the  same  light  as  the  lawyer;  and  the  story  of  his  supposed  predi- 
lections reached  Arthur's  ears  in  so  distorted  a  shape,  that  even 
he  was  staggered  and  revolted :  still  Philip  was  so  young. — 
Arthur's  oath  to  the  orphans'  mother  so  recent — and  if  thus  early 
inclined  to  wrong  courses,  should  not  every  effort  be  made  to  lure 
him  back  to  the  straight  path  ?  With  these  views  and  reasonings, 
as  soon  as  he  was  able,  Arthur  himself  visited  Mrs.  Lacy,  and  the 
note  from  Philip,  which  the  good  lady  put  into  his  hands,  affected 
him  deeply,  and  confirmed  all  his  previous  resolutions.  Mrs. 
Lacy  was  very  anxious  to  get  at  his  name ;  but  Arthur,  having 
heard  that  Philip  had  refused  all  aid  from  his  father  and  Mr. 
Blackwell,  thought  that  the  young  man's  pride  might  work  equally 
against  himself,  and  therefore  evaded  the  landlady's  curiosity. 
He  wrote  the  next  day  the  letter  we  have  seen,  to  Mr.  Roger 
Morton,  whose  address  Catherine  had  given  to  him;  and  by 
return  of  post  came  a  letter  from  the  linen-draper  narrating  the 
flight  of  Sidney,  as  it  was  supposed  with  his  brother.  This  news 

so  excited  Arthur,  that  he  insisted  on  going  down  to  N at 

once,  and  joining  in  the  search.  His  father,  alarmed  for  his 
health,  positively  refused  ;  and  the  consequence  was  an  increase 
of  fever,  a  consultation  with  the  doctors,  and  a  declaration  that 
Mr.  Arthur  was  in  that  state  that  it  would  be  dangerous  not  to 
let  him  have  his  own  way.  Mr.  Beaufort  was  forced  to  yield, 

and  with  Blackwell  and  Mr.  Sharp  accompanied  his  son  to  N . 

The  inquiries,  hitherto  fruitless,  then  assumed  a  more  regular  and 
business-like  character.  By  little  and  little  they  came,  through 
the  aid  of  Mr.  Sharp,  upon  the  right  clue,  up  to  a  certain  point. 
But  here  there  was  a  double  scent :  two  youths  answering  the 
description,  had  been  seen  at  a  small  village ;  then  there  came 
those  who  asserted  that  they  had  seen  the  same  youths  at  a  sea- 
port in  one  direction ;  others,  who  deposed  to  their  having  taken 
the  road  to  an  inland  town  in  the  other.  This  had  induced 
Arthur  and  his  father  to  part  company.  Mr.  Beaufort,  accom- 
panied by  Roger  Morton,  went  to  the  seaport ;  and  Arthur,  with 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  143 

Mr.  Spencer  and  Mr.  Sharp,  more  fortunate,  tracked  the  fugi- 
tives to  their  retreat.  As  for  Mr.  Beaufort,  senior,  now  that  his 
mind  was  more  at  ease  about  his  son,  he  was  thoroughly  sick  of 
the  whole  thing ;  greatly  bored  by  the  society  of  Mr.  Morton ; 
very  much  ashamed  that  he,  so  respectable  and  great  a  man, 
should  be  employed  on  such  an  errand ;  more  afraid  of,  than 
pleased  with,  any  chance  of  discovering  the  fierce  Philip ;  and 
secretly  resolved  upon  slinking  back  to  London,  at  the  first  rea- 
sonable excuse. 

The  next  morning  Mr.  Sharp  entered  betimes  Mr.  Stubmore's 
counting-house.  In  the  yard  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  Philip,  and 
managed  to  keep  himself  unseen  by  that  young  gentleman. 

"Mr.  Stubmore,  I  think?" 

''At  your  service,  sir." 

Mr.  Sharp  shut  the  glass  door  mysteriously,  and  lifting  up  the 
corner  of  a  green  curtain  that  covered  the  panes,  beckoned  to  the 
startled  Stubmore  to  approach. 

"You  see  that  'ere  young  man  in  the  velveteen  jacket;  you 
employs  him  ? ' ' 

"  I  do,  sir,  he  is  my  right  hand." 

"Well,  now,  don't  be  frightened,  but  his  friends  are  arter 
him.  He  has  got  into  bad  ways,  and  we  want  you  to  give  him  a 
little  good  advice." 

' '  Pooh  !  I  know  he  has  run  away,  like  a  fine-spirited  lad  as  he 
is ;  and  as  long  as  he  likes  to  stay  with  me,  they  as  comes  after 
him  may  get  a  ducking  in  the  horse-trough !  " 

' '  Be  you  a  father  ?  a  father  of  a  family,  Mr.  Stubmore  ?  ' '  said 
Sharp,  thrusting  his  hands  into  his  breeches  pocket,  swelling  out 
his  stomach,  and  pursing  up  his  lips  with  great  solemnity. 

' '  Nonsense !  no  gammon  with  me  !  Take  your  chaff  to  the 
goslings.  I  tells  you  I  can't  do  without  that  'ere  lad.  Every  man 
to  himself." 

"  Oho  !  "  thought  Sharp,  "I  must  change  the  tack."  "Mr. 
Stubmore,"  said  he,  taking  a  stool,  "you  speaks  like  a  sensible 
man.  No  one  can  reasonably  go  for  to  ask  a  gentleman  to  go  for 
to  inconvenience  his-self.  But  what  do  you  know  of  that  'ere 
youngster  ?  Had  you  a  carakter  with  him?  " 

"  What's  that  to  you?" 

"Why,  it's  more  to  yourself,  Mr.  Stubmore;  he  is  but  a  lad, 
and  if  he  goes  back  to  his  friends  they  may  take  care  of  him,  but 
he  got  into  a  bad  set  afore  he  come  here.  Do  you  know  a  good- 
looking  chap  with  whiskers,  who  talks  of  his  pheaton,  and  was 
riding  last  night  on  a  brown  mare?  " 


144  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

"  Y-e-s!"  said  Mr.  Stubmore,  growing  rather  pale,  "  and  I 
knows  the  mare  too.  Why,  sir,  I  sold  him  that  mare  !  " 

"  Did  he  pay  you  for  her  ?  " 

' '  Why,  to  be  sure,  he  gave  me  a  check  on  Ccmtts. ' ' 

"  And  you  took  it !  My  eyes  !  What  a  flat !  "  Here  Mr.  Sharp 
closed  the  orbs  he  had  invoked,  and  whistled  with  that  self- hug- 
ging delight  which  men  invariably  leel  when  another  man  is  taken  in. 

Mr.  Stubmore  became  evidently  nervous. 

"Why,  what  now; — you  don't  think  I'm  done?  I  did  not 
let  him  have  the  mare  till  I  went  to  the  hotel, — found  he  was  cut- 
ting a  great  dash  there,  a  groom,  a  phe^ton,  and  a  fine  horse,  and 
as  extravagant  as  the  devil !  " 

' '  O  Lord  ! — O  Lord  !  what  a  world  this  is  !  What  does  he 
call  his-self?  " 

"Why,  here's  the  check — George  Frederick  de — de  Burgh 
Smith." 

"  Put  it  in  your  pipe,  my  man, — put  it  in  your  pipe — not  worth 
a  d— n  !  " 

"And  who  the  deuce  are  you,  sir?"  bawled  out  Mr.  Stub- 
more,  in  an  equal  rage  both  with  himself  and  his  guest. 

"  I,  sir,"  said  the  visitor,  rising  with  great  dignity, — "  I,  sir, 
am  of  the  great  Bow  Street  Office,  and  my  name  is  John  Sharp  !  ' ' 

Mr.  Stubmore  nearly  fell  off  his  stool,  his  eyes  rolled  in  his  head, 
and  his  teeth  chattered.  Mr.  Sharp  perceived  the  advantage  he 
had  gained,  and  continued  : 

"Yes,  sir;  and  I  could  have  much  to  say  against  that  chap, 
who  is  nothing  more  or  less  than  Dashing  Jerry,  as  has  ruined 
more  girls  and  more  tradesmen  than  any  lord  in  the  land.  And 
so  I  called  to  give  you  a  bit  of  caution ;  for,  says  I  to  myself, 
'  Mr.  Stubmore  is  a  respectable  man.'  " 

"  I  hope  I  am,  sir,"  said  the  crest-fallen  horse-dealer  ;  "  that 
was  always  my  character." 

' '  And  the  father  of  a  family  ?  " 

"  Three  boys  and  a  babe  at  the  buzzom,"  said  Mr.  Stubmore, 
pathetically. 

"And  he  sha'n't  be  taken  in  if  I  can  help  it !  That  'ere  young 
man  as  I  am  arter,  you  see,  knows  Captain  Smith — ha!  ha! — 
smell  a  rat  now — eh  ?  " 

"Captain  Smith  said  he  knew  him — the — wiper — and  that's 
what  made  me  so  green." 

"  Well,  we  must  not  be  hard  on  the  youngster  :  'cause  why,  he 
has  friends  as  is  gemmen.  But  you  tell  him  to  go  back  to  his 
poor  dear  relations,  and  all  shall  be  forgiven ;  and  say  as  how 
you  won't  keep  him ;  and  if  he  don't  go  back,  he'll  have  to  get 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  145 

his  livelihood  without  a  carakter ;  and  use  your  influence  with 
him  like  a  man  and  a  Christian,  and  what's  more,  like  the  father 
of  a  family,  Mr.  Stubmore — with  three  boys  and  a  babe  at  the 
buzzom.  You  won't  keep  him  now  ?  " 

"  Keep  him  ?  I  have  had  a  precious  escape.  I'd  better  go  and 
see  after  the  mare." 

' '  I  doubt  if  you'll  find  her :  the  captain  caught  a  sight  of  me 
this  morning.  Why,  he  lodges  at  our  hotel ! — He's  off  by  this 
time  !  " 

' '  And  why  the  devil  did  you  let  him  go  ?  " 

"  'Cause  I  had  no  writ  agin  him  !  "  said  the  Bow  Street  Officer ; 
and  he  walked  straight  out  of  the  counting-office  satisfied  that  he 
had  ' '  done  the  job. ' ' 

To  snatch  his  hat — to  run  to  the  hotel — to  find  that  Captain 
Smith  had  indeed  gone  off  in  his  phaeton,  bag  and  baggage,  the 
same  as  he  came,  except  that  he  had  now  two  horses  to  the 
phaeton  instead  of  one — having  left  with  the  landlord  the  amount 
of  his  bill  in  another  check  upon  Coutts — was  the  work  of  five 
minutes  with  Mr.  Stubmore.  He  returned  home,  panting  and 
purple  with  indignation  and  wounded  feeling. 

"To  think  that  chap,  whom  I  took  into  my  yard  like  a  son, 
should  have  connived  at  this  !  'Taint  the  money — 'tis  the  willany 
that  'flicts  me  !  "  muttered  Mr.  Stubmore,  as  he  re-entered  the 
mews. 

Here  he  came  plump  upon  Philip,  who  said, — 

"  Sir,  I  wished  to  see  you,  to  say  that  you  had  better  take  care 
of  Captain  Smith." 

"Oh,  you  did,  did  you,  now  he's  gone?  'sconded  off  to 
America,  I  dare  say,  by  this  time.  Now  look  ye,  young  man  : 
your  friends  are  after  you,  I  won't  say  anything  agin  you  ;  but 
you  go  back  to  them ;  I  wash  my  hands  of  you.  Quite  too  much 
for  me.  There's  your  week,  and  never  let  me  catch  you  in  my 
yard  agin,  that's  all !  " 

Philip  dropped  the  money  which  Stubmore  had  put  into  his 
hand.  "My  friends!  friends  have  been  with  you,  have  they? 
I  thought  so  ;  I  thank  them.  And  so  you  part  with  me  ?  Well, 
you  have  been  kind,  very  kind ;  let  us  part  kindly " ;  and  he 
held  out  his  hand. 

Mr.  Stubmore  was  softened — he  touched  the  hand  held  out  to 
him  and  looked  doubtful  a  moment;  but  Captain  de  Burgh 
Smith's  check  for  eighty  guineas  suddenly  rose  before  his  eyes. 
He  turned  on  his  heel  abruptly,  and  said,  over  his  shoulder : 

"Don't  go  after  Captain  Smith  (he'll  come  to  the  gallowt); 
10 


146  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

mend  your  ways,  and  be  ruled  by  your  poor  dear  relatives,  whose 
hearts  you  are  breaking." 

"Captain  Smith!  Did  my  relations  tell  you?" 

"  Yes — yes — they  told  me  all ;  that  is,  they  sent  to  tell  me  ;  so 
you  see  I'm  d — d  soft  not  to  lay  hold  of  you.  But,  perhaps,  if 
they  be  gemmen,  they'll  act  as  sich,  and  cash  me  this  here 
check  !  " 

But  the  last  words  were  said  to  air.  Philip  had  rushed  from 
the  yard. 

With  a  heaving  breast,  and  every  nerve  in  his  body  quivering 
with  wrath,  the  proud,  unhappy  boy  strode  through  the  gay 
streets.  They  had  betrayed  him  then,  these  accursed  Beauforts  ! 
They  circled  his  steps  with  schemes  to  drive  him  like  a  deer  into 
the  snare  of  their  loathsome  charity  !  The  roof  was  to  be  taken 
from  his  head — the  bread  from  his  lips — so  that  he  might  fawn  at 
their  knees  for  bounty.  ' '  But  they  shall  not  break  my  spirit,  nor 
steal  away  my  curse.  No,  my  dead  mother,  never  !  " 

As  he  thus  muttered,  he  passed  through  a  patch  of  waste  land 
that  led  to  the  row  of  houses  in  which  his  lodging  was  placed. 
And  here  a  voice  called  to  him,  and  a  hand  was  laid  on  his 
shoulder.  He  turned,  and  Arthur  Beaufort,  who  had  followed 
him  from  the  street,  stood  behind  him.  Philip  did  not,  at  the 
first  glance,  recognize  his  cousin.  Illness  had  so  altered  him,  and 
his  dress  was  so  different  from  that  in  which  he  had  first  and  last 
beheld  him.  The  contrast  between  the  two  young  men  was 
remarkable.  Philip  was  clad  in  the  rough  garb  suited  to  his  late 
calling — a  jacket  of  black  velveteen  ill-fitting  and  ill-fashioned, 
loose  fustian  trowsers,  coarse  shoes,  his  hat  set  deep  over  his  pent 
eyebrows,  his  raven  hair  long  and  neglected.  He  was  just  at  that 
age  when  one  with  strong  features  and  robust  frame,  is  at  the  worst 
in  point  of  appearance — the  sinewy  proportions  not  yet  sufficiently 
fleshed,  and  seeming  inharmonious  and  undeveloped ;  precisely  in 
proportion,  perhaps,  to  the  symmetry  towards  which  they  insen- 
sibly mature  :  the  contour  of  the  face  sharpened  from  the  round- 
ness of  boyhood,  and  losing  its  bloom  without  yet  acquiring  that 
relief  and  shadow  which  make  the  expression  and  dignity  of  the 
masculine  countenance.  Thus  accoutred,  thus  gaunt,  and  uncouth, 
stood  Morton.  Arthur  Beaufort,  always  refined  in  his  appear- 
ance, seemed  yet  more  so  from  the  almost  feminine  delicacy 
which  ill  health  threw  over  his  pale  complexion  and  graceful 
figure;  that  sort  of  unconscious  elegance  which  belongs  to  the 
dress  of  the  rich  when  they  are  young — seen  most  in  minutiae ; 
not  observable,  perhaps,  by  themselves — marked  forcibly  and 
painfully  the  distinction  of  rank  between  the  two.  That  distinc- 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  147 

tion  Beaufort  did  not  feel;  but  at  a  glance  it  was  visible  to 
Philip. 

The  past  rushed  back  on  him.  The  sunny  lawn;  the  gun 
offered  and  rejected  ;  the  pride  of  old,  much  less  haughty  than 
the  pride  of  to-day. 

"Philip,"  said  Beaufort,  feebly,  "they  tell  me  you  will  not 
accept  any  kindness  from  me  or  mine.  Ah !  if  you  knew  how 
we  have  sought  you  !  " 

"Knew!"  cried  Philip,  savagely,  for  that  unlucky  sentence 
recalled  to  him  his  late  interview  with  his  employer,  and  his  pres- 
ent destitution.  "  Knew  !  And  why  have  you  dared  to  hunt  me 
out,  and  halloo  me  down  ?  Why  must  this  insolent  tyranny,  that 
assumes  the  right  over  these  limbs  and  this  free  will,  betray  and 
expose  me  and  my  wretchedness  wherever  I  turn  ?  ' ' 

"Your  poor  mother — "  began  Beaufort ! 

"Name  her  not  with  your  lips  !  name  her  not!  "  cried  Philip, 
growing  livid  with  his  emotions.  "Talk  not  of  the  mercy — the 
forethought — a  Beaufort  could  show  to  her  and  her  offspring !  I 
accept  it  not — I  believe  it  not.  Oh,  yes  !  you  follow  me  now 
with  your  false  kindness ;  and  why  ?  Because  your  father — your 
vain,  hollow,  heartless  father — " 

"  Hold  !  "  said  Beaufort,  in  a  tone  of  such  reproach,  that  it 
startled  the  wild  heart  on  which  it  fell ;  "  it  is  my  father  you 
speak  of.  Let  the  son  respect  the  son." 

"No — no — no  !  I  will  respect  none  of  your  race.  I  tell  you, 
your  father  fears  me.  I  tell  you,  that  my  last  words  to  him  ring 
in  his  ears  !  My  wrongs !  Arthur  Beaufort,  when  you  are  absent 
I  seek  to  forget  them ;  in  your  abhorred  presence  they  revive — 
they—" 

He  stopped,  almost  choked  with  his  passion;  but  continued 
instantly,  with  equal  intensity  of  fervor : 

"Were  yon  tree  the  gibbet,  and  to  touch  your  hand  could 
alone  save  me  from  it,  I  would  scorn  your  aid.  Aid  !  the  very 
thought  fires  my  blood  and  nerves  my  hand.  Aid  !  Will  a 
Beaufort  give  me  back  my  birthright — restore  my  dead  mother's 
fair  name  ?  Minion  !  sleek,  dainty,  luxurious  minion  !  out  of  my 
path  !  You  have  my  fortune,  my  station,  my  rights;  I  have  but 
poverty,  and  hate,  and  disdain.  I  swear,  again  and  again,  that 
you  shall  not  purchase  these  from  me." 

"But,  Philip — Philip,"  cried  Beaufort,  catching  his  arm; 
"  hear  one — hear  one  who  stood  by  your — " 

The  sentence  that  would  have  saved  the  outcast  from  the 
demons  that  were  darkening  and  swooping  round  his  soul,  died 
upon  the  young  Protector's  lips.  Blinded,  maddened,  excited, 


148  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

and  exasperated,  almost  out  of  humanity  itself,  Philip  fiercely — 
brutally — swung  aside  the  enfeebled  form  that  sought  to  cling  to 
him,  and  Beaufort  fell  at  his  feet.  Morton  stopped — glared  at 
him  with  clenched  hands  and  a  smiling  lip — sprang  over  his  pros- 
trate form,  and  bounded  to  his  home. 

He  slackened  his  pace  as  he  neared  the  house,  and  looked 
behind ;  but  Beaufort  had  not  followed  him.  He  entered  the 
house,  and  found  Sidney  in  the  room,  with  a  countenance  so 
much  more  gay  than  that  he  had  lately  worn,  that,  absorbed  as 
he  was  in  thought  and  passion,  it  yet  did  not  fail  to  strike  him. 

"What  has  pleased  you,  Sidney?" 

The  child  smiled. 

"  Ah  !  it  is  a  secret — I  was  not  to  tell  you.  But  I'm  sure  you 
are  not  the  naughty  boy  he  says  you  are." 

"He!— who?" 

"  Don't  look  so  angry,  Philip  :  you  frighten  me  !  " 

"  And  you  torture  me.  Who  could  malign  one  brother  to  the 
other?" 

"  Oh  !  it  was  all  meant  very  kindly ;  there's  been  such  a  nice, 
dear,  good  gentleman  here,  and  he  cried  when  he  saw  me,  and 
said  he  knew  dear  mamma.  Well,  and  he  has  promised  to  take 
me  home  with  him  and  give  me  a  pretty  pony — as  pretty — as 
pretty — oh,  as  pretty  as  it  can  be  got !  And  he  is  to  call  again 
and  tell  me  more  :  I  think  he  is  a  fairy,  Philip." 

"Did  he  say  that  he  was  to  take  me,  too,  Sidney?  "  said  Mor- 
ton, seating  himself,  and  looking  very  pale.  At  that  question, 
Sidney  hung  his  head. 

"No,  brother;  he  says  you  won't  go,  and  that  you  are  a  bad 
boy ;  and  that  you  associate  with  wicked  people ;  and  that  you 
want  to  keep  me  shut  up  here  and  not  let  any  one  be  good  to  me. 
But  I  told  him  I  did  not  believe  that;  yes,  indeed,  I  told  him  so." 

And  Sidney  endeavored  caressingly  to  withdraw  the  hands  that 
his  brother  placed  before  his  face. 

Morton  started  up,  and  walked  hastily  to  and  fro  the  room. 
"This,"  thought  he,  "  is  another  emissary  of  the  Beauforts — per- 
haps the  lawyer :  they  will  take  him  from  me — the  last  thing  left  to 
love  and  hope  for.  I  will  foil  them." 

"Sidney,"  he  said  aloud;  "we  must  go  hence  to-day,  this 
very  hour;  nay,  instantly.  " 

"  What !  away  from  this  nice  good  gentleman  ?" 

"  Curse  him  !  yes,  away  from  him.  Do  not  cry — it  is  of  no 
use — you  must  go." 

This  was  said  more  harshly  than  Philip  had  ever  yet  spoken  to 
Sidney ;  and  when  he  had  said  it,  he  left  the  room  to  settle  with 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  149 

the  landlady,  and  to  pack  up  their  scanty  effects.     In  another 
hour,  the  brothers  had  turned  their  backs  on  the  town. 


CHAPTER  X. 

"  I'll  carry  thee 
In  Sorrow's  arms  to  welcome  Misery." 

HEY  WOOD'S  Duchess  of  Suffolk. 
"Who's  here  besides  foul  weather  ?" — SHAKSPEARE:  Lear. 

THE  sun  was  as  bright,  and  the  sky  as  calm  during  this  journey 
of  the  orphans,  as  in  the  last.  They  avoided,  as  before,  the 
main  roads,  and  their  way  lay  through  landscapes  that  might  have 
charmed  a  Gainsborough's  eye.  Autumn  scattered  its  last  hues  of 
gold  over  the  various  foliage,  and  the  poppy  glowed  from  the 
hedges,  and  the  wild  convolvuluses,  here  and  there,  still  gleamed 
on  the  wayside  with  a  parting  smile. 

At  times,  over  the  sloping  stubbles,  broke  the  sound  of  the 
sportsman's  gun  ;  and  ever  and  anon,  by  stream  and  sedge,  they 
started  the  shy  wild  fowl,  just  come  from  the  far  lands,  nor  yet 
settled  in  the  new  haunts  too  soon  to  be  invaded. 

But  there  was  no  longer  in  the  travellers  the  same  hearts  that 
had  made  light  of  hardship  and  fatigue.  Sidney  was  no  longer 
flying  from  a  harsh  master,  and  his  step  was  not  elastic  with  the 
energy  of  fear  that  looked  behind,  and  of  hope  that  smiled  before. 
He  was  going  a  toilsome,  weary  journey,  he  knew  not  why  nor 
whither ;  just,  too,  when  he  had  made  a  friend,  whose  soothing 
words  haunted  his  childish  fancy.  He  was  displeased  with 
Philip,  and  in  sullen  and  silent  thoughtfulness  slowly  plodded 
behind  him;  and  Morton  himself  was  gloomy,  and  knew  not 
where  in  the  world  to  seek  a  future. 

They  arrived  at  dusk  at  a  small  inn,  not  so  far  distant  from  the 
town  they  had  left  as  Morton  could  have  wished ;  but  the  days 
were  shorter  than  in  their  first  flight. 

They  were  shown  into  a  small  sanded  parlor,  which  Sidney 
eyed  with  great  disgust ;  nor  did  he  seem  more  pleased  with  the 
hacked  and  jagged  leg  of  cold  mutton,  which  was  all  that  the 
hostess  set  before  them  for  supper.  Philip  in  vain  endeavored  to 
cheer  him  up,  and  ate  to  set  him  the  example.  He  felt  relieved 
when,  under  the  auspices  of  a  good-looking,  good-natured  cham- 
bermaid, Sidney  retired  to  rest,  and  he  was  left  in  the  parlor  to 
his  own  meditations.  Hitherto  it  had  been  a  happy  thing  for 
Morton  that  he  had  had  some  one  dependent  on  him ;  that  feel- 
ing had  given  him  perseverance,  patience,  fortitude,  and  hope. 


itjO  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

But  now,  dispirited  and  sad,  he  felt  rather  the  horror  of  being 
responsible  for  a  human  life,  without  seeing  the  means  to  dis- 
charge the  trust.  It  was  clear,  even  to  his  experience,  that  he 
was  not  likely  to  find  another  employer  as  facile  as  Mr.  Stub- 
more  ;  and  wherever  he  went,  he  felt  as  if  his  Destiny  stalked  at 
his  back.  He  took  out  his  little  fortune  and  spread  it  on  the 
table,  counting  it  over  and  over ;  it  had  remained  pretty  stationary 
since  his  service  with  Mr.  Stubmore,  for  Sidney  had  swallowed 
up  the  wages  of  his  hire.  While  thus  employed,  the  door  opened, 
and  the  chambermaid,  showing  in  a  gentleman,  said,  "  We  have 
no  other  room,  sir." 

"Very  well,  then, — I'm  not  particular;  a  tumbler  of  brandy- 
and-water,  stiffish,  cold — without,  the  newspaper — and  a  cigar  : 
You'll  excuse  smoking,  sir  !  " 

Philip  looked  up  from  his  hoard,  and  Captain  de  Burgh  Smith 
stood  before  him. 

"Ah!  "  said  the  latter,  "  well  met !  "  And  closing  the  door, 
he  took  off  his  great  coat,  seated  himself  near  Philip,  and  bent 
both  his  eyes  with  considerable  wistfulness  on  the  neat  rows  into 
which  Philip's  bank-notes,  sovereigns,  and  shillings,  were  arrayed. 

' '  Pretty  little  sum  for  pocket  money ;  caush  in  hand  goes  a 
great  way,  properly  invested.  You  must  have  been  very  lucky. 
Well,  so  I  suppose  you  are  surprised  to  see  me  here  without  my 
pheaton?" 

"  I  wish  I  had  never  seen  you  at  all,"  replied  Philip,  uncourt- 
eously,  and  restoring  his  money  to  his  pocket ;  ' '  your  fraud  upon 
Mr.  Stubmore,  and  your  assurance  that  you  knew  me,  have  sent 
me  adrift  upon  the  world." 

"  What's  one  man's  meat  is  another  man's  poison,"  said  the 
captain  philosophically  :  "no  use  fretting,,  care  killed  a  cat.  I 
am  as  badly  off  as  you ;  for,  hang  me,  if  there  was  not  a  Bow 
Street  runner  in  the  town.  I  caught  his  eye  fixed  on  me  like  a 

gimblet :  so  I  bolted — went  on  to  N ,  left  my  pheaton  and 

groom  there  for  the  present,  and  have  doubled  back,  to  baufBe  pur- 
suit, and  cut  across  the  country.  You  recollect  that  noice  girl  we 
saw  in  the  coach  ;  'gad,  I  served  her  spouse  that  is  to  be  a  praetty 
trick  !  Borrowed  his  money  under  pretense  of  investing  it  in  the 
New  Grand  Anti-Dry-Rot  Company ;  cool  hundred — it's  only 
just  gone,  sir." 

Here  the  chambermaid  entered  with  the  brandy  and  water,  the 
newspaper,  and  cigar, — the  captain  lighted  the  last,  took  a  deep 
sup  from  the  beverage,  and  said  gaily : 

"Well,  now,  let  us  join  fortunes;  we  are  both,  as  you  say, 
'adrift.'  Best  way  to  stuand  the  breeze  is  to  unite  the  caubles," 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  151 

Philip  shook  his  head,  and,  displeased  with  his  companion, 
sought  his  pillow.  He  took  care  to  put  his  money  under  his  head, 
and  to  lock  his  door. 

The  brothers  started  at  daybreak  ;  Sidney  was  even  more  dis- 
contented than  on  the  previous  day.  The  weather  was  hot  and 
oppressive ;  they  rested  for  some  hours  at  noon,  and  in  the  cool 
of  the  evening  renewed  their  way.  Philip  had  made  up  his  mind 
to  steer  for  a  town  in  the  thick  of  a  hunting  district,  where  he 
hoped  his  equestrian  capacities  might  again  befriend  him ;  and 
their  path  now  lay  through  a  chain  of  vast  dreary  commons,  which 
gave  them  at  least  the  advantage  to  skirt  the  road-side  unobserved. 
But,  somehow  or  other,  either  Philip  had  been  misinformed  as  to 
an  inn  where  he  had  proposed  to  pass  the  night,  or  he  had  missed 
it ;  for  the  clouds  darkened,  and  the  sun  went  down,  and  no  ves- 
tige of  human  habitation  was  discernible.  Sidney,  footsore  and 
querulous,  began  to  weep,  and  declare  that  he  could  stir  no  fur- 
ther ;  and  while  Philip,  whose  iron  frame  defied  fatigue,  compas- 
sionately paused  to  rest  his  brother,  a  low  roll  of  thunder  broke 
upon  the  gloomy  air.  "  There  will  be  a  storm,"  said  he,  anx- 
iously. "Come  on — pray,  Sidney,  come  on." 

"  It  is  so  cruel  in  you,  brother  Philip,"  replied  Sidney,  sob- 
bing. "I  wish  I  had  never — never  gone  with  you." 

A  flash  of  lightning,  that  illuminated  the  whole  heavens,  ling- 
ered round  Sidney's  pale  face  as  he  spoke ;  and  Philip  threw  him- 
self instinctively  on  the  child,  as  if  to  protect  him  even  from  the 
wrath  of  the  unshelterable  flame.  Sidney,  hushed  and  terrified, 
clung  to  his  brother's  breast;  after  a  pause,  he  silently  consented 
to  resume  their  journey.  But  now  the  storm  came  near  and 
nearer  to  the  wanderers.  The  darkness  grew  rapidly  more  intense, 
save  when  the  lightning  lit  up  the  heaven  and  earth  alike  with 
intolerable  lustre.  And  when  at  length  the  rain  began  to  fall  in  mer- 
ciless and  drenching  torrents,  even  Philip's  brave  heart  failed 
him.  How  could  he  ask  Sidney  to  proceed,  when  they  could 
scarcely  see  an  inch  before  them  ?  All  that  could  now  be  done  was 
to  gain  the  high-road,  and  hope  for  some  passing  conveyance. 
With  fits  and  starts,  and  by  the  glare  of  the  lightning,  they  at- 
tained their  object ;  and  stood  at  last  on  the  great  broad  Thorough- 
fare, along  which,  since  the  day  when  the  Roman  carved  it  from 
the  waste,  Misery  hath  plodded,  and  Luxury  rolled,  their  com- 
mon way. 

Philip  had  stripped  handkerchief,  coat,  vest,  all  to  shelter  Sid- 
ney ;  and  he  felt  a  kind  of  strange  pleasure  through  the  dark, 
even  to  hear  Sidney's  voice  wail  and  moan.  But  that  voice  grew 


152  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

more  languid  and  faint ;  it  ceased;  Sidney's  weight  hung  heavy 
— heavier  on  the  fostering  arm. 

"  For  Heaven's  sake,  speak  !  speak,  Sidney  !  only  one  word ;  7 
will  carry  you  in  my  arms  !  " 

"  I  think  I  am  dying,"  replied  Sidney,  in  a  low  murmur;  "  I 
am  so  tired  and  worn  out,  I  can  go  no  further — I  must  lie  here." 
And  he  sunk  at  once  upon  the  reeking  grass  beside  the  road.  At 
this  time  the  rain  gradually  relaxed,  the  clouds  broke  away ;  a 
gray  light  succeeded  to  the  darkness ;  the  lightning  was  more  dis- 
tant ;  and  the  thunder  rolled  onward  in  its  awful  path.  Kneeling 
on  the  ground,  Philip  supported  his  brother  in  his  arms,  and  cast 
his  pleading  eyes  upward  to  the  softening  terrors  of  the  sky.  A 
star — a  solitary  star — broke  out  for  one  moment,  as  if  to  smile 
comfort  upon  him,  and  then  vanished.  But  lo !  in  the  distance  there 
suddenly  gleamed  a  red,  steady  light,  like  that  in  some  solitary 
window;  it  was  no  will-o'-the-wisp,  it  was  too  stationary — human 
shelter  was  then  nearer  than  he  had  thought  for.  He  pointed  to 
the  light,  and  whispered,  " Rouse  yourself,  one  struggle  more;  it 
cannot  be  far  off. ' ' 

"It  is  impossible — I  cannot  stir,"  answered  Sidney :  and  a  sud- 
den flash  of  lightning  showed  his  countenance,  ghastly,  as  if  with 
the  damps  of  Death.  What  could  the  brother  do  ? — stay  there, 
and  see  the  boy  perish  before  his  eyes?  Leave  him  on  the  road, 
and  fly  to  the  friendly  light  ?  The  last  plan  was  the  sole  one  left, 
yet  he  shrunk  from  it  in  greater  terror  than  the  first.  Was  that  a 
step  that  he  heard  across  the  road  ?  He  held  his  breath  to  listen 
— a  form  became  dimly  visible — it  approached. 

Philip  shouted  aloud. 

"  What  now?"  answered  the  voice,  and  it  seemed  familiar  to 
Morton's  ear.  He  sprang  forward ;  and  putting  his  face  close  to 
the  wayfarer,  thought  to  recognize  the  features  of  Captain  de 
Burgh  Smith.  The  captain,  whose  eyes  were  yet  more  accus- 
tomed to  the  dark,  made  the  first  overture. 

"  Why,  my  lad,  it  is  you  then  !  'Gad, you  froightened  me  !  " 

Odious  as  this  man  had  hitherto  been  to  Philip,  he  was  as  wel- 
come to  him  as  daylight  now  ;  he  grasped  his  hand  ;  -'My  bro- 
ther— a  child — is  here,  dying,  I  fear,  with  cold  and  fatigue :  he 
cannot  stir.  Will  you  stay  with  him — support  him — but  for  a  few 
moments,  while  I  make  to  yon  light?  See,  I  have  money — plenty 
of  money  !  " 

"  My  good  lad,  it  is  very  ugly  work  staying  here  at  this  hour : 
still — where's  the  choild  ?  " 

"Here,  here!  make  haste,  raise  him  !  that's  right !  God  bless 
you !  I  shall  be  back  ere  you  think  me  gone." 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  153 

He  sprang  from  the  road,  and  plunged  through  the  heath,  the 
furze,  the  rank  glistening  pools,  straight  towards  the  light — as  the 
swimmer  towards  the  shore. 

The  captain,  though  a  rogue,  was  human;  and  when  life — an 
innocent  life — is  at  stake,  even  a  rogue's  heart  rises  up  from  its 
weedy  bed.  He  muttered  a  few  oaths,  it  is  true,  but  he  held  the 
child  in  his  arms ;  and,  taking  out  a  little  tin  case,  poured  some 
brandy  down  Sidney's  throat ;  and  then,  by  way  of  company, 
down  his  own.  The  cordial  revived  the  boy;  he  opened  his  eyes, 
and  said,  "  I  think  I  can  go  on  now,  Philip." 

We  must  return  to  Arthur  Beaufort.  He  was  naturally,  though 
gentle,  a  person  of  high  spirit  and  not  without  pride.  He  rose 
from  the  ground  with  bitter,  resentful  feelings  and  a  blushing 
cheek,  and  went  his  way  to  the  hotel.  Here  he  found  Mr.  Spen- 
cer just  returned  from  his  visit  to  Sidney.  Enchanted  with  the 
soft  and  endearing  manners  of  his  lost  Catherine's  son,  and 
deeply  affected  with  the  resemblance  that  the  child  bore  to  the 
mother  as  he  had  seen  her  last  at  the  gay  and  rosy  age  of  fair  six- 
teen, his  description  of  the  younger  brother  drew  Beaufort's 
indignant  thoughts  from  the  elder.  He  cordially  concurred  with 
Mr.  Spencer  in  the  wish  to  save  one  so  gentle  from  the  domina- 
tion of  one  so  fierce ;  and  this,  after  all,  was  the  child  Catherine 
had  most  strongly  commended  to  him.  She  had  said  little  of  the 
elder ;  perhaps  she  had  been  aware  of  his  ungracious  and  untract- 
able  nature,  and,  as  it  seemed  to  Arthur  Beaufort,  his  predilec- 
tions for  a  coarse  and  low  career. 

"  Yes,"  said  he,  "this  boy,  then,  shall  console  me  for  the  per- 
verse brutality  of  the  other.  He  shall  indeed  drink  of  my  cup, 
and  eat  of  my  bread,  and  be  to  me  as  a  brother." 

"  What !  "  said  Mr.  Spencer,  changing  countenance,  "  you  do 
not  intend  to  take  Sidney  to  live  with  you  !  I  meant  him  for  my 
son — my  adopted  son." 

"No;  generous  as  you  are,"  said  Arthur,  pressing  his  hand, 
"  this  charge  devolves  on  me — it  is  rny  right,  I  am  the  orphan's 
relation — his  mother  consigned  him  to  me.  But  he  shall  be  taught 
to  love  you  not  the  less." 

Mr.  Spencer  was  silent.  He  could  not  bear  the  thought  of  los- 
ing Sidney  as  an  inmate  of  his  cheerless  home,  a  tender  relic  of 
his  early  love.  From  that  moment  he  began  to  contemplate  the 
possibility  of  securing  Sidney  to  himself,  unknown  to  Beaufort. 

The  plans  both  of  Arthur  and  Spencer  were  interrupted  by  the 
sudden  retreat  of  the  brothers.  They  determined  to  depart  differ- 
ent ways  in  search  of  them.  Spencer,  as  the  more  helpless  of  the 


154  NIGHT   AND 

two,  obtained  the  aid  of  Mr.  Sharp ;  Beaufort  departed  with  the 
lawyer. 

Two  travellers,  in  a  hired  barouche,  were  slowly  dragged  by 
a  pair  of  jaded  posters  along  the  commons  I  have  just  described. 

"I  think,"  said  one,  "that  the  storm  is  very  much  abated ; 
heigho  !  what  an  unpleasant  night !  " 

"  Unkimmon  ugly,  sir,"  answered  the  other  ;  "and  an  awful 
long  stage,  eighteen  miles.  These  here  remote  places  are  quite 
behind  the  age,  sir — quite.  However,  I  think  we  shall  kitch  them 
now." 

"  I  am  very  much  afraid  of  that  eldest  boy,  Sharp.  He  seems 
a  dreadful  vagabond." 

"  You  see,  sir,  quite  hand  in  glove  with  Dashing  Jerry ;  met  in 
the  same  inn  last  night — preconcerted,  you  may  be  quite  sure.  It 
would  be  the  best  day's  job  I  have  done  this  many  a  day  to  save 
that  'ere  little  fellow  from  being  corrupted.  You  sees  he  is  just 
of  a  size  to  be  useful  to  these  bad  karakters.  If  they  took  to  bur- 
glary, he  would  be  a  treasure  to  them ;  slip  him  through  a  plane 
of  glass  like  a  ferret,  sir." 

"Don't  talk  of  it,  Sharp,"  said  Mr.  Spencer,  with  a  groan  ; 
"and  recollect,  if  we  get  hold  of  him,  that  you  are  not  to  say  a 
word  to  Mr.  Beaufort." 

"  I  understand,  sir;  and  I  always  goes  with  the  gemman  who 
behaves  most  like  a  gemman." 

Here  a  loud  halloo  was  heard  close  by  the  horses'  heads. 

"Good  heavens,  if  that  is  a  foot-pad!  "  said  Mr.  Spencer, 
shaking  violently. 

"  Lord,  sir,  I  have  my  barkers  with  me.     Who's  there  ?  " 

The  barouche  stopped — a  man  came  to  the  window. 

"  Excuse  me,  sir,"  said  the  stranger ;  "  but  there  is  a  poor  boy 
here  so  tired  and  ill  that  I  fear  he  will  never  reach  the  next  town, 
unless  you  will  koindly  give  him  a  lift." 

"  A  poor  boy  !  "  said  Mr.  Spencer,  poking  his  head  over  the 
head  of  Mr.  Sharp.  < '  Where  ? ' ' 

"If  you  would  just  drop  him  at  the  King's  Awrms  it  would  be 
achaurity,"  said  the  man. 

Sharp  pinched  Mr.  Spencer  on  the  shoulder,  "That's  Dashing 
Jerry  ;  I'll  get  out."  So  saying,  he  opened  the  door,  jumped  into 
the  road,  and  presently  reappeared  with  the  lost  and  welcome  Sid- 
ney in  his  arms.  "Ben't  this  the  boy?"  he  whispered  to  Mr. 
Spencer  ;  and,  taking  the  lamp  from  the  carriage,  he  raised  it  to 
the  child's  face. 

"It  is  !  it  is  !  God  be  thanked  !  "  exclaimed  the  worthy  man. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  155 

"  Will  you  leave  him  at  the  King's  Awrms? — we  shall  be  there 
in  an  hour  or  two,"  cried  the  Captain. 

"  We  !  Who's  we?1'  said  Sharp,  gruffly. 

"Why,  myself  and  the  choild's  brother." 

"  Oh  !  "  said  Sharp,  raising  the  lantern  to  his  own  face;  "you 
knows  me,  I  think,  Master  Jerry?  Let  me  kitch  you  agin,  that's 
all.  And  give  my  compliments  to  your  'sociate,  and  say,  if  he 
prosecutes  this  here  hurchin  any  more,  we'll  settle  his  bizness  for 
him,  and  so  take  a  hint  arid  make  yourself  scarce,  old  boy  ! " 

With  that  Mr.  Sharp  jumped  into  the  barouche,  and  bade  the 
postboy  drive  on  as  fast  as  he  could. 

Ten  minutes  after  this  abduction,  Philip,  followed  by  two 
laborers,  with  a  barrow,  a  lantern,  and  two  blankets,  returned 
from  the  hospitable  farm  to  which  the  light  had  conducted  him. 
The  spot  where  he  had  left  Sidney,  and  which  he  knew  by  a 
neighboring  milestone,  was  vacant ;  he  shouted  an  alarm,  and  the 
Captain  answered  from  the  distance  of  some  threescore  yards. 
Philip  came  to  him.  "Where  is  my  brother?  " 

< '  Gone  away  in  a  barouche  and  pair.  Devil  take  me  if  I 
understand  it."  And  the  Captain  proceeded  to  give  a  confused 
account  of  what  had  passed. 

"My  brother!  my  brother!  they  have  torn  thee  from  me, 
then !  "  cried  Philip,  and  he  fell  to  the  earth  insensible. 

CHAPTER  XL 

"  Vous  me  rendrez  mon  frere !  " — CASIMER  DELA  VIGNE  :  Les  Enfans 
c?  Edouard. 

ONE  evening,  a  week  after  this  event,  a  wild,  tattered,  haggard 
youth  knocked  at  the  door  of  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort. 

The  porter  slowly  presented  himself. 

" Is  your  master  at  home?  I  must  see  him  instantly." 

"That's  more  than  you  can,  my  man;  my  master  does  not 
see  the  like  of  you  this  time  of  night,"  replied  the  porter,  eyeing 
the  ragged  apparition  before  him,  with  great  disdain. 

"  See  me,  he  must  and  shall,"  replied  the  young  man ;  and  as 
the  porter  blocked  up  the  entrance,  he  grasped  his  collar  with  a 
hand  of  iron,  swung  him,  huge  as  he  was,  aside,  and  strode  into 
the  spacious  hall. 

"  Stop  !  stop  !  "  cried  the  porter,  recovering  himself.  "James ! 
John  !  here's  a  go  !  " 

Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  had  been  back  in  town  several  days.  Mrs. 
Beaufort,  who  was  waiting  his  return  from  his  club,  was  in  the 


156  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

dining-room.  Hearing  a  noise  in  the  hall,  she  opened  the  door, 
and  saw  the  strange,  grim  figure  I  have  described,  advancing 
towards  her.  "  Who  are  you  ?  "  she  said  ;  "  what  do  you  want  ?  " 

"I  am  Philip  Morton.     Who  are  you ?  " 

"My  husband,"  said  Mrs.  Beaufort,  shrinking  into  the  parlor, 
while  Morton  followed  her  and  closed  the  door,  "my  husband, 
Mr.  Beaufort,  is  not  at  home." 

"You  are  Mrs.  Beaufort,  then  !  Well,  you  can  understand  me. 
I  want  my  brother.  He  has  been  basely  reft  from  me.  Tell  me 
where  he  is,  and  I  will  forgive  all.  Restore  him  to  me,  and  I  will 
bless  you  and  yours."  And  Philip  fell  on  his  knees  and  grasped 
the  train  of  her  gown. 

"I  know  nothing  of  your  brother,  Mr.  Morton,"  cried  Mrs. 
Beaufort,  surprised  and  alarmed.  "Arthur,  whom  we  expect 
every  day,  writes  us  word  that  all  search  for  him  has  been  in  vain. " 

"Ha!  you  admit  the  search?"  cried  Morton,  rising  and 
clenching  his  hands.  "And  who  else  but  you  or  yours  would 
have  parted  brother  and  brother?  Answer  me  where  he  is.  No 
subterfuge,  madam :  I  am  desperate  !  ' ' 

Mrs.  Beaufort,  though  a  woman  of  that  worldly  coldness  and 
indifference  which,  on  ordinary  occasions,  supply  the  place  cf 
courage,  was  extremely  terrified  by  the  tone  and  mien  of  her  rude 
guest.  She  laid  her  hand  on  the  bell ;  but  Morton  seized  her 
arm,  and,  holding  it  sternly,  said,  while  his  dark  eyes  shot  fire 
through  the  glimmering  room,  "  I  will  not  stir  hence  till  you  have 
told  me.  Will  you  reject  my  gratitude,  my  blessing  ?  Beware ! 
Again,  where  have  you  hid  my  brother?" 

At  that  instant  the  door  opened,  and  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort 
entered.  The  lady,  with  a  shriek  of  joy,  wrenched  herself  from 
Philip's  grasp,  and  flew  to  her  husband. 

"  Save  me  from  this  ruffian  !  "  she  said,  with  an  hysterical  sob. 

Mr.  Beaufort,  who  had  heard  from  Blackwell  strange  accounts 
of  Philip's  obdurate  perverseness,  vile  associates,  and  unredeem- 
able character,  was  roused  from  his  usual  timidity  by  the  appeal 
of  his  wife. 

"Insolent  reprobate!"  he  said,  advancing  to  Philip;  "after 
all  the  absurd  goodness  of  my  son  and  myself;  after  rejecting  all 
our  offers,  and  persisting  in  your  miserable  and  vicious  conduct, 
how  dare  you  presume  to  force  yourself  into  this  house?  Begone, 
or  I  will  send  for  the  constables  to  remove  you  !  " 

"  Man,  man,"  cried  Philip,  restraining  the  fury  that  shook  him 
from  head  to  foot,  "  I  care  not  for  your  threats — I  scarcely  hear 
your  abuse — your  son,  or  yourself,  has  stolen  away  my  brother : 
tell  me  only  where  he  is;  let  me  see  him  once  more.  Do  not 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  157 

drive  me  hence,  without  one  word  of  justice,  of  pity.  I  implore 
you — on  my  knees  I  implore  you — yes,  I,  I  implore  you,  Robert 
Beaufort,  to  have  mercy  on  your  brother's  son.  Where  is  Sidney  ?  " 

Like  all  mean  and  cowardly  men,  Robert  Beaufort  was  rather 
encouraged  than  softened  by  Philip's  abrupt  humility. 

"I  know  nothing  of  your  brother;  and  if  this  is  not  all  some 
villanous  trick — which  it  may  be — I  am  heartily  rejoiced  that  he, 
poor  child  !  is  rescued  from  the  contamination  of  such  a  compan- 
ion," answered  Beaufort. 

"  I  am  at  your  feet  still ;  again,  for  the  last  time,  clinging  to 
you  a  suppliant:  I  pray  you  to  tell  me  the  truth." 

Mr.  Beaufort,  more  and  more  exasperated  by  Morton's  forbear- 
ance, raised  his  hand  as  if  to  strike ;  when,  at  that  moment,  one 
hitherto  unobserved — one  who,  terrified  by  the  scene  she  had 
witnessed  but  could  not  comprehend,  had  slunk  into  a  dark  corner 
of  the  room, — now  came  from  her  retreat :  And  a  child's  soft 
voice  was  heard,  saying ; 

"  Do  not  strike  him,  papa  !  let  him  have  his  brother!  " 

Mr.  Beaufort's  arm  fell  to  his  side  :  kneeling  before  him,  and 
by  the  outcast's  side,  was  his  own  young  daughter ;  she  had  crept 
into  the  room  unobserved,  when  her  father  entered.  Through  the 
dim  shadows,  relieved  only  by  the  red  and  fitful  gleam  of  the 
fire,  he  saw  her  fair,  meek  face  looking  up  wistfully  at  his  own, 
with  tears  of  excitement,  and  perhaps  of  pity — for  children  have 
a  quick  insight  into  the  reality  of  grief  in  those  not  far  removed 
from  their  own  years — glistening  in  her  soft  eyes.  Philip  looked 
round  bewildered,  and  he  saw  that  face  which  seemed  to  him,  at 
such  a  time,  like  the  face  of  an  angel. 

"Hear  her  !  "  he  murmured  :  "oh,  hear  her  !  For  her  sake,  do 
not  sever  one  orphan  from  the  other  !  " 

"Take  away  that  child,  Mrs.  Beaufort,"  cried  Robert,  angrily. 
"Will  you  let  her  disgrace  herself  thus?  And  you,  sir,  begone 
from  this  roof ;  and  when  you  can  approach  me  with  due  respect, 
I  will  give  you,  as  I  said  I  would,  the  means  to  get  an  honest 
living  !  " 

Philip  rose  ;  Mrs.  Beaufort  had  already  led  away  her  daughter 
and  she  took  that  opportunity  of  sending  in  the  servants;  their 
forms  filled  up  the  doorway. 

"Will  you  go?"  continued  Mr.  Beaufort,  more  and  more  em- 
boldened, as  he  saw  the  menials  at  hand,  "or  shall  they  expel 
you?" 

"  It  is  enough,  sir,"  said  Philip,  with  a  sudden  calm  and  dig- 
nity that  surprised,  and  almost  awed  his  uncle.  "  My  father,  if 


158  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

the  dead  yet   watch  over  the  living,   has  seen  and  heard  you. 
There  will  come  a  day  for  justice.     Out  of  my  path,  hirelings  !  " 

He  waved  his  arm,  and  the  menials  shrunk  back  at  his  tread, 
stalked  across  the  inhospitable  hall,  and  vanished. 

When  he  had  gained  the  street,  he  turned  and  looked  up 
at  the  house.  His  dark  and  hollow  eyes,  gleaming  through 
the  long  and  raven  hair  that  fell  profusely  over  his  face, 
had  in  them  an  expression  of  menace  almost  preternatural, 
from  its  settled  calmness;  the  wild  and  untutored  majesty 
which,  through  rags  and  squalor  never  deserted  his  form,  as 
it  never  does  the  forms  of  men  in  whom  the  will  is  strong  and 
the  sense  of  injustice  deep  ;  the  outstretched  arm  ;  the  haggard, 
but  noble  features ;  the  bloomless  and  scathed  youth, — all  gave  to 
his  features  and  his  stature  an  aspect  awful  in  its  sinister  and 
voiceless  wrath.  There  he  stood  a  moment,  like  one  to  whom 
woe  and  wrong  had  given  a  Prophet's  power,  guiding  the  eye  of 
the  unforgetful  Fate  to  the  roof  of  the  Oppressor.  Then  slowly, 
and  with  a  half  smile,  he  turned  away,  and  strode  through  the 
streets  till  he  arrived  at  one  of  the  narrow  lanes  that  intersect  the 
more  equivocal  quarters  of  the  huge  city.  He  stopped  at  the 
private  entrance  of  a  small  pawnbroker's  shop ;  the  door  was 
opened  by  a  slipshod  boy;  he  ascended  the  dingy  stairs  till  he 
came  to  the  second  floor ;  and  there,  in  a  small  back  room,  he 
found  Captain  de  Burgh  Smith,  seated  before  a  table  with  a 
couple  of  candles  on  it,  smoking  a  cigar,  and  playing  at  cards 
by  himself. 

'  Well,  what  news  of  your  brother,  Bully  Phil  ?  " 
'  None  :  they  will  reveal  nothing." 
'  Do  you  give  him  up  ?  " 
'  Never  !     My  hope  now  is  in  you." 

'  Well,  I  thought  you  would  be  driven  to  come  to  me,  and  1 
will  do  something  for  you  that  I  should  not  loike  to  do  for  myself. 
I  told  you  that  I  knew  the  Bow  Street  runner  who  was  in  the 
barouche.  I  will  find  him  out — Heaven  knows  that  is  easily  done  ; 
and,  if  you  can  pay  well,  you  will  get  your  news." 

"  You  shall  have  all  I  possess,  if  you  restore  my  brother.  See 
what  it  is,  one  hundred  pounds — it  was  his  fortune.  It  is  useless 
to  me  without  him.  There,  take  fifty  now,  and  if " 

Philip  stopped,  for  his  voice  trembled  too  much  to  allow  him 
farther  speech.  Captain  Smith  thrust  the  notes  into  his  pocket, 
and  said, — 

"  We'll  consider  it  settled." 

Captain  Smith  fulfilled  his  promise.  He  saw  the  Bow  Street 
officer.  Mr.  Sharp  had  been  bribed  too  high  by  the  opposite 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  159 

party  to  tell  tales,  and  he  willingly  encouraged  the  suspicion  that 
Sidney  was  under  the  care  of  the  Beauforts.  He  promised,  how- 
ever, for  the  sake  of  ten  guineas,  to  procure  Philip  a  letter  from 
Sidney  himself.  This  was  all  he  would  undertake. 

Philip  was  satisfied.  At  the  end  of  another  week,  Mr.  Sharp 
transmitted  to  the  Captain  a  letter,  which  he,  in  his  turn,  gave  to 
Philip.  It  ran  thus,  in  Sidney's  own  sprawling  hand  : 

"  DEAR  BROTHER  PHILIP, — I  am  told  you  wish  to.  know  how  I 
am,  and  therefore  take  up  my  pen,  and  assure  you  that  I  write  all 
out  of  my  own  head.  I  am  very  Comfortable  and  happy — much 
more  so  than  I  have  been  since  poor  deir  mama  died ;  so  1  beg 
you  won't  vex  yourself  about  me :  and  pray  don't  try  and  Find 
me  out,  For  I  would  not  go  with  you  again  for  the  world.  I  am 
so  much  better  Off  here.  I  wish  you  would  be  a  good  boy,  and 
leave  off  your  Bad  ways ;  for  1  am  sure,  as  every  one  says,  I  don't 
know  what  would  have  become  of  me  if  I  had  staid  with  you. 

Mr. [the  Mr.  half  scratched  out]  the  gentleman  I  am  with, 

says  if  you  turn  out  Properly,  he  will  be  a  friend  to  you,  Too ; 
but  he  advises  you  to  go,  like  a  Good  boy,  to  Arthur  Beaufort, 
and  ask  his  pardon  for  the  past,  and  then  Arthur  will  be  very 
kind  to  you.  I  send  you  a  great  Big  sum  of  ao/.,  and  the  gentle- 
man says  he  would  send  more,  only  it  might  make  you  naughty, 
and  set  up.  I  go  to  church  now  every  Sunday,  and  read  good 
books,  and  always  pray  that  God  may  open  your  eyes.  I  have 
such  a  Nice  pony,  with  such  a  long  tale.  So  no  more  at  present 
from  your  affectionate  brother.  SIDNEY  MORTON. 

Oct.  8,  1 8— . 

"Pray,  pray  don't  come  after  me  Any  more.  You  know  I 
neerly  died  of  it,  but  for  this  deir  good  gentleman  I  am  with." 

So  this,  then,  was  the  crowning  reward  of  all  his  sufferings  and 
all  his  love.  There  was  the  letter,  evidently,  undictated,  with  its 
errors  of  orthography,  and  in  the  child's  rough  scrawl;  the  ser- 
pent's tooth  pierced  to  the  heart,  and  left  there  its  most  lasting 
venom. 

"  I  have  done  with  him  for  ever,"  said  Philip,  brushing  away 
the  bitter  tears.  "  I  will  molest  him  no  farther;  I  care  no  more 
to  pierce  this  mystery.  Better  for  him  as  it  is — he  is  happy  ! 
Well,  well,  and  I — /will  never  care  for  a  human  being  again." 

He  bowed  his  head  over  his  hands ;  and  when  he  rose,  his 
heart  felt  to  him  like  stone.  It  seemed  as  if  Conscience  herself 
had  fled  from  his  soul  on  the  wings  of  departed  Love. 


160  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

"  But  you  have  found  the  mountain's  top — there  sit 
On  the  calm  flourishing  head  of  it ; 
And  whilst  with  wearied  steps  we  upward  go, 
See  Us  and  Clouds  below." — COWLEV. 

IT  was  true  that  Sidney  was  happy   in  his  new  home,  and 
thither  we  must  now  trace  him. 

On  reaching  the  town  where  the  travellers  in  the  barouche  had 
been  requested  to  leave  Sidney,  ''The  King's  Arms  "  was  pre 
cisely  the  inn  eschewed  by  Mr.  Spencer.  While  the  horses  wer^ 
being  changed,  he  summoned  the  surgeon  of  the  town  to  examine 
the  child,  who  had  already  much  recovered ;  and  by  stripping 
his  clothes,  wrapping  him  in  warm  blankets,  and  administering 
cordials,  he  was  permitted  to  reach  another  stage,  so  as  to  baffle 
pursuit  that  night ;  and  in  three  days  Mr.  Spencer  had  placed  his 
new  charge  with  his  maiden  sisters,  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
from  the  spot  where  he  had  been  found.  He  would  not  take  him 
to  his  own  home  yet.  He  feared  the  claims  of  Arthur  Beaufort. 
He  artfully  wrote  to  that  gentleman,  stating  that  he  had  aban- 
doned the  chase  of  Sidney  in  despair,  and  desiring  to  know  if  he 
had  discovered  him  ;  and  a  bribe  of  ^300  to  Mr.  Sharp,  with  a 
candid  exposition  of  his  reasons  for  secreting  Sidney — reasons  in 
which  the  worthy  officer  professed  to  sympathize — secured  the 
discretion  of  his  ally.  But  he  would  not  deny  himself  the  pleas- 
ure of  being  in  the  same  house  with  Sidney,  and  was  therefore 
for  some  months  the  guest  of  his  sisters.  At  length  he  heard  that 
young  Beaufort  had  been  ordered  abroad  for  his  health,  and  he 
then  deemed  it  safe  to  transfer  his  new  idol  to  his  Lares  by  the 
lakes.  During  this  interval  the  current  of  the  younger  Morton's 
life  had  indeed  flowed  through  flowers.  At  his  age  the  cares  of 
females  were  almost  a  want  as  well  as  a  luxury,  and  the  sisters 
spoiled  and  petted  him  as  much  as  any  elderly  nymphs  in  Cyth- 
erea  ever  petted  Cupid.  They  were  good,  excellent,  high-nosed, 
flat-bosomed  spinsters,  sentimentally  fond  of  their  brother, whom 
they  called  "  the  poet,"  and  dotingly  attached  to  children.  The 
cleanness,  the  quiet, the  good  cheer  of  their  neat  abode,  all  tended 
to  revive  and  invigorate  the  spirits  of  their  young  guest,  and 
every  one  there  seemed  to  vie  which  should  love  him  the  most. 
Still  his  especial  favorite  was  Mr.  Spencer :  for  Spencer  never 
went  out  without  bringing  back  cakes  and  toys ;  and  Spencer 
gave  him  his  pony ;  and  Spencer  rode  a  little  crop-eared  nag  by 
his  side;  and  Spencer,  in  short,  was  associated  with  his  every 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  l6l 

comfort  and  caprice.  He  told  them  his  little  history ;  and  when 
he  said  how  Philip  had  left  him  alone  for  long  hours  together, 
and  how  Philip  had  forced  him  to  his  last  and  nearly  fatal  journey, 
the  old  maids  groaned,  and  the  old  bachelor  sighed,  and  they  all 
cried  in  a  breath,  that  "  Philip  was  a  very  wicked  boy."  It  was 
not  only  their  obvious  policy  to  detach  him  from  his  brother,  but 
it  was  their  sincere  conviction  that  they  did  right  to  do  so.  Sid- 
ney began,  it  is  true,  by  taking  Philip's  part ;  but  his  mind  was 
ductile,  and  he  still  looked  back  with  a  shudder  to  the  hardships 
he  had  gone  through  :  and  so  by  little  and  little  he  learned  to 
forget  all  the  endearing  and  fostering  love  Philip  had  evinced  to 
him ;  to  connect  his  name  with  dark  and  mysterious  fears ;  to 
repeat  thanksgivings  to  Providence  that  he  was  saved  from  him ; 
and  to  hope  that  they  might  never  meet  again.  In  fact,  when 
Mr.  Spencer  learned  from  Sharp  that  it  was  through  Captain 
Smith,  the  swindler,  that  application  had  been  made  by  Philip 
for  news  of  his  brother,  and  having  also  learned  before,  from  the 
same  person,  that  Philip  had  been  implicated  in  the  sale  of  a 
horse,  swindled,  if  not  stolen, — he  saw  every  additional  reason 
to  widen  the  stream  that  flowed  between  the  wolf  and  the  lamb. 
The  older  Sidney  grew,  the  better  he  comprehended  and  appre- 
ciated the  motives  of  his  protector — for  he  was  brought  up  in  a 
formal  school  of  propriety  and  ethics,  and  his  mind  naturally 
revolted  from  all  images  of  violence  or  fraud.  Mr.  Spencer 
changed  both  the  Christian  and  the  surname  of  his  protege,  in 
order  to  elude  the  search  whether  of  Philip,  the  Mortons,  or  the 
Beauforts,  and  Sidney  passed  for  his  nephew  by  a  younger  brother 
who  had  died  in  India. 

So  there,  by  the  calm  banks  of  the  placid  lake,  amidst  the  fair- 
est landscapes  of  the  Island  Garden,  the  youngest  born  of  Cathe- 
rine passed  his  tranquil  days.  The  monotony  of  the  retreat  did 
not  fatigue  a  spirit  which,  as  he  grew  up,  found  occupation  in 
books,  music,  poetry,  and  the  elegances  of  the  cultivated,  if 
quiet  life,  within  his  reach.  To  the  rough  past  he  looked  back 
as  to  an  evil  dream,  in  which  the  image  of  Philip  stood  dark  and 
threatening.  His  brother's  name,  as  he  grew  older,  he  rarely 
mentioned  ;  and  if  he  did  volunteer  it  to  Mr.  Spencer,  the  bloom 
on  his  cheek  grew  paler.  The  sweetness  of  his  manners,  his  fair 
face  and  winning  smile,  still  continued  to  secure  him  love,  and  to 
screen  from  the  common  eye  whatever  of  selfishness  yet  lurked  in 
his  nature.  And,  indeed,  that  fault  in  so  serene  a  career,  and 
with  friends  so  attached,  was  seldom  called  into  action.  So  thus 
was  he  severed  from  both  the  protectors,  Arthur  and  Philip,  to 
whom  poor  Catherine  had  bequeathed  him, 
n 


162  .     NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

By  a  perverse  and  strange  mystery,  they,  to  whom  the  charge 
was  most  intrusted  were  the  very  persons  who  were  forbidden  to 
redeem  it.  On  our  death-beds  when  we  think  we  have  provided 
for  those  we  leave  behind — should  we  lose  the  last  smile  that  gilds 
the  solemn  agony,  if  we  could  look  one  year  into  the  Future  ? 

Arthur  Beaufort,  after  an  ineffectual  search  for  Sidney,  heard, 
on  returning  to  his  home,  no  unexaggerated  narrative  of  Philip's 
visit,  and  listened,  with  deep  resentment,  to  his  mother's  distorted 
account  of  the  language  addressed  to  her.  It  is  not  to  be  sur- 
prised that,  with  all  his  romantic  generosity,  he  felt  sickened  and 
revolted  at  violence  that  seemed  to  him  without  excuse.  Though 
not  a  revengeful  character,  he  had  not  that  meekness  which  never 
resents.  He  looked  upon  Philip  Morton  as  upon  one  rendered 
incorrigible  by  bad  passions  and  evil  company.  Still  Catherine's 
last  bequest,  and  Philip's  note  to  him  the  Unknown  Comforter, 
often  recurred  to  him,  and  he  would  have  willingly  yet  aided  had 
Philip  been  thrown  in  his  way.  But  as  it  was,  when  he  looked 
around,  and  saw  the  examples  of  that  charity  that  begins  at  home, 
in  which  the  world  abounds,  he  felt  as  if  he  had  done  his  duty  ; 
and  prosperity  having,  though  it  could  not  harden  his  heart,  still 
sapped  the  habits  of  perseverance,  so  by  little  and  little  the  image 
of  the  dying  Catherine,  and  the  thought  of  her  sons,  faded  from 
his  remembrance.  And  for  this  there  was  the  more  excuse  after 
the  receipt  of  an  anonymous  letter,  which  relieved  all  his  appre- 
hensions on  behalf  of  Sidney.  The  letter  was  short,  and  stated 
simply  that  Sidney  Morton  had  found  a  friend  who  would  protect 
him  throughout  life ;  but  who  would  not  scruple  to  apply  to  Beau- 
fort if  ever  he  needed  his  assistance.  So  one  son,  and  that  the 
youngest  and  the  best-loved,  was  safe.  And  the  other,  had  he 
not  chosen  his  own  career  ?  Alas,  poor  Catherine  !  when  you 
fancied  that  Philip  was  the  one  sure  to  force  his  way  into  fortune, 
and  Sidney  the  one  most  helpless,  how  ill  did  you  judge  of  the 
human  heart !  It  was  that  very  strength  in  Philip's  nature  which 
tempted  the  winds  that  scattered  the  blossoms,  and  shook  the 
stem  to  its  roots ;  while  the  lighter  and  frailer  nature  bent  to  the 
gale,  and  bore  transplanting  to  a  happier  soil.  If  a  parent  read 
these  pages,  let  him  pause  and  think  well  on  the  characters  of  his 
children ;  let  him  at  once  fear  and  hope  the  most  for  the  one 
whose  passions  and  whose  temper  lead  to  a  struggle  with  the 
world.  That  same  world  is  a  tough  wrestler,  and  has  a  bear's 
gripe  for  the  poor. 

Meanwhile.  Arthur  Beaufort's  own  complaints,  which  grew 
serious  and  menaced  consumption,  recalled  his  thoughts  more 
and  more  every  day  to  himself.  He  was  compelled  to  abandon 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  163 

his  career  at  the  University,  and  to  seek  for  health  in  the  softer 
breezes  of  the  South.  His  parents  accompanied  him  to  Nice ; 
and  when,  at  the  end  of  a  few  months,  he  was  restored  to  health, 
the  desire  of  travel  seized  the  mind  and  attracted  the  fancy  of  the 
young  heir.  His  father  and  mother,  satisfied  with  his  recovery, 
and  not  unwilling  that  he  should  acquire  the  polish  of  Conti- 
nental intercourse,  returned  to  England;  and  young  Beaufort, 
with  gay  companions  and  munificent  income,  already  courted, 
spoiled,  and  flattered,  commenced  his  tour  with  the  fair  climes 
of  Italy. 

So,  O  dark  mystery  of  the  Moral  World  ! — so,  unlike  the 
order  of  the  External  Universe,  glide  together,  side  by  side,  the 
shadowy  steeds  of  NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  Examine  life  in  its  own 
world  ;  confound  not  that  world,  the  inner  one,  the  practical  one, 
with  the  more  visible,  yet  airier  and  less  substantial  system,  doing 
homage  to  the  sun,  to  whose  throne,  afar  in  the  infinite  space, 
the  human  heart  has  no  wings  to  flee.  In  life,  the  mind  and  the 
circumstance  give  the  true  seasons,  and  regulate  the  darkness  and 
the  light.  Of  two  men  standing  on  the  same  foot  of  earth,  the 
one  revels  in  the  joyous  noon,  the  other  shudders  in  the  solitude 
of  night.  For  Hope  and  Fortune  the  day-star  is  ever  shining. 
For  Care  and  Penury,  Night  changes  not  with  the  ticking  of  the 
clock,  nor  with  the  shadow  on  the  dial.  Morning  for  the  heir, 
night  for  the  houseless,  and  God's  eye  over  both. 


BOOK  III. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"The  knight  of  arts  and  industry, 

And  his  achievements  fair." 
THOMSON'S  Castle  oj  Indolence  :  Explanatory  Verse  to  Canto  II. 

IN  a  popular  and  respectable,  but  not  very  fashionable  quar- 
tier  in  Paris,  and  in  the  tolerably  broad  and  effective  locale  of  the 
Rue ,  there  might  be  seen,  at  the  time  I  now  treat  of,  a  curi- 
ous-looking building,  that  jutted  out  semicircularly  from  the 
neighboring  shops,  with  planter  pilasters,  and  compo  ornaments. 
The  virtuosi  of  the  quartier  had  discovered  that  the  building  was 
constructed  in  imitation  of  an  ancient  temple  in  Rome;  this  erec- 
tion, then  fresh  and  new,  reached  only  to  the  (ntrtsot,  The  pil- 


164  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

asters  were  painted  light  green  and  gilded  in  the  cornices, 
while,  surmounting  the  architrave,  were  three  little  statues — one 
held  a  torch,  another  a  bow,  and  a  third  a  bag  ;  they  were  there- 
fore rumored,  1  know  not  with  what  justice,  to  be  the  artistical 
representatives  of  Hymen,  Cupid,  and  Fortune. 

On  the  door  was  neatly  engraved,  on  a  brass-plate,  the  follow- 
ing inscription : 

"MONSIEUR  LOVE,  ANGLAIS, 

A  L' ENTRESOL." 

And  if  you  had  crossed  the  threshold  and  mounted  the  stairs, 
and  gained  that  mysterious  story  inhabited  by  Monsieur  Love, 
you  would  have  seen,  upon  another  door  to  the  right,  another 
epigraph,  informing  those  interested  in  the  inquiry  that  the 
bureau  of  M.  Love  was  open  daily  from  nine  in  the  morning  to 
four  in  the  afternoon. 

The  office  of  M.  Love — for  office  it  was,  and  of  a  nature  not 
unfrequently  designated  in  the  "  petites  affichcs  "  of  Paris — had 
been  established  about  six  months ;  and  whether  it  was  the  popu- 
larity of  the  profession,  or  the  shape  of  the  shop,  or  the  manners 
of  M.  Love  himself,  I  cannot  pretend  to  say,  but  certain  it  is  that 
the  Temple  of  Hymen — as  M.  Love  classically  termed  it — had 

become  exceedingly  in  vogue  in  the  Faubourg  St.  .  It  was 

rumored  that  no  less  than  nine  marriages  in  the  immediate  neigh- 
borhood had  been  manufactured  at  this  fortunate  office,  and  that 
they  had  all  turned  out  happily  except  one,  in  which  the  bride 
being  sixty,  and  the  bridegroom  twenty-four,  there  had  been 
rumors  of  domestic  dissension ;  but  as  the  lady  had  been  deliv- 
ered,— I  mean  of  her  husband,  who  had  drowned  himself  in  the 
Seine,  about  a  month  after  the  ceremony,  things  had  turned  out 
in  the  long  run  better  than  might  have  been  expected,  and  the 
widow  was  so  little  discouraged,  that  she  had  been  seen  to  enter 
the  office  already — a  circumstance  that  was  greatly  to  the  credit  of 
Mr.  Love. 

Perhaps  the  secret  of  Mr.  Love's  success,  and  of  the  marked 
superiority  of  his  establishment  in  rank  and  popularity  over  simi- 
lar ones,  consisted  in  the  spirit  and  liberality  with  which  the  busi- 
ness was  conducted.  He  seemed  resolved  to  destroy  all  formality 
between  parties  who  might  desire  to  draw  closer  to  each  other, 
and  he  hit  upon  the  lucky  device  of  a  table  d'h0/e,very  well  man- 
aged and  held  twice  a-week,  and  often  followed  by  a  soiree  dan- 
sante  ;  so  that,  if  they  pleased,  the  aspirants  to  matrimonial  hap- 
piness might  become  acquainted  without  gene.  As  he  himself 
was  a  jolly,  convivial  fellow  of  much  savoir  vivre,  it  is  astonish- 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  165 

ing  how  well  he  made  these  entertainments  answer.  Persons  who 
had  not  seemed  to  take  to  each  other  in  the  first  distant  interview 
grew  extremely  enamoured  when  the  corks  of  the  champagne — an 
extra  of  course  in  the  abonnement — bounced  against  the  wall. 
Added  to  this,'  Mr.  Love  took  great  pains  to  know  the  tradesmen 
in  his  neighborhood;  and,  what  with  his  jokes,  his  appearance  of 
easy  circumstances,  and  the  fluency  with  which  he  spoke  the  lan- 
guage, he  became  an  universal  favorite.  Many  persons  who  were 
uncommonly  starch  in  general,  and  who  professed  to  ridicule  the 
bureau,  saw  nothing  improper  in  dining  at  the  table  (fhote.  To 
those  who  wished  for  secrecy  he  was  said  to  be  wonderfully  dis- 
creet ;  but  there  were  others  who  did  not  affect  to  conceal  their 
discontent  at  the  single  state:  for  the  rest,  the  entertainments 
were  so  contrived  as  never  to  shock  the  delicacy,  while  they 
always  forwarded  the  suit. 

It  was  about  eight  o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  Mr.  Love  was 
still  seated  at  dinner,  or  rather  at  dessert,  with  a  party  of  guests. 
His  apartments,  though  small,  were  somewhat  gaudily  painted 
and  furnished,  and  his  dining-room  was  decorated  d  la  Turque. 
The  party  consisted — first,  of  a  rich  epicier,  a  widower,  Monsieur 
Goupille  by  name,  an  eminent  man  in  the  Faubourg;  he  was  in 
his  grand  climacteric,  but  still  belhomme ;  wore  a  very  well-made 
peruque  of  light  auburn,  with  tight  pantaloons,  which  contained 
a  pair  of  very  respectable  calves;  and  his  white  neckcloth  and 
his  large  frill  were  washed  and  got  up  with  especial  care.  Next 
to  Monsieur  Goupille  sat  a  very  demure  and  very  spare  young 
lady  of  about  two-and-thirty,  who  was  said  to  have  saved  a  for- 
tune— Heaven  knows  how — in  the  family  of  a  rich  English  milord, 
where  she  had  officiated  as  governess  ;  she  called  herself  Madem- 
oiselle Adele  de  Courval,  and  was  very  particular  about  the  tie, 
and  very  melancholy  about  her  ancestors.  Monsieur  Goupille 
generally  put  his  finger  through  his  peruyue,  and  fell  away  a 
little  on  his  left  pantaloon  when  he  spoke  to  Mademoiselle 
de  Courval,  and  Mademoiselle  de  Courval  generally  pecked 
at  her  bouquet  when  she  answered  Monsieur  Goupille.  On 
the  other  side  of  this  young  lady  sat  a  fine-looking  fair  man 
— M.  Sovolofski,  a  Pole,  buttoned  up  to  the  chin,  and  rather 
threadbare,  though  uncommonly  neat.  He  was  flanked  by  a 
little  fat  lady,  who  had  been  very  pretty,  and  who  kept  a  board- 
ing-house, or  pension,  for  the  English,  she  herself  being  English, 
though  long  established  in  Paris.  Rumor  said  she  had  been  gay 
in  her  youth,  and  dropped  in  Paris  by  a  Russian  nobleman,  with 
a  very  pretty  settlement, — she  and  the  settlement  having  equally 
expanded  by  time  and  season :  she  was  called  Madame  Beavor. 


1 66  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  table  was  a  red-headed  Englishman,  who 
spoke  very  little  French ;  who  had  been  told  that  French  ladies 
were  passionately  fond  of  light  hair;  and  who,  having  ^2000  of 
his  own,  intended  to  quadruple  that  sum  by  a  prudent  marriage. 
Nobody  knew  what  his  family  was,  but  his  name  was  Higgins. 
His  neighbor  was  an  exceedingly  tall,  large-boned  Frenchman, 
with  a  long  nose  and  a  red  riband,  who  was  much  seen  at  Fras- 
cati's,  and  had  served  under  Napoleon.  Then  came  another  lady, 
extremely  pretty,  very  piquante,  and  very  gay,  but  past  the  pre- 
miere jeunessc,  who  ogled  Mr.  Love  more  than  she  did  any  of  his 
guests :  she  was  called  Rosalie  Caumartin,  and  was  at  the  head  of 
a  large  bon-bon  establishment ;  married,  but  her  husband  had 
gone  four  years  ago  to  the  Isle  of  France,  and  she  was  a  little 
doubtful  whether  she  might  not  be  justly  entitled  to  the  privileges 
of  a  widow.  Next  to  Mr.  Love,  in  the  place  of  honor,  sat  no  less 
a  person  than  the  Vicomte  de  Vaudemont,  a  French  gentleman, 
really  well-born,  but  whose  various  excesses,  added  to  his  poverty, 
had  not  served  to  sustain  that  respect  for  his  birth  which  he  con- 
sidered due  to  it.  He  had  already  been  twice  married ;  once  to 
an  Englishwoman,  who  had  been  decoyed  by  the  title ;  by  this 
lady,  who  died  in  childbed,  he  had  one  son  ;  a  fact  which  he 
sedulously  concealed  from  the  world  of  Paris  by  keeping  the 
unhappy  boy — who  was  now  some  eighteen  or  nineteen  years  old 
— a  perpetual  exile  in  England.  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont  did  not 
wish  to  pass  for  more  than  thirty,  and  he  considered  that  to  pro- 
duce a  son  of  eighteen  would  be  to  make  the  lad  a  monster  of 
ingratitude  by  giving  the  lie  every  hour  to  his  own  father  !  In 
spite  of  this  precaution  the  Vicomte  found  great  difficulty  in  get- 
ting a  third  wife — especially  as  he  had  no  actual  and  visible 
income ;  was,  not  seamed,  but  ploughed  up,  with  the  small-pox  ; 
small  of  stature,  and  was  considered  more  than  tin  pen  bete.  He 
was,  however,  a  prodigious  dandy,  and  wore  a  lace  frill  and 
embroidered  waistcoat.  Mr.  Love's  vis-a-vis  was  Mr.  Birnie,  an 
Englishman,  a  sort  of  assistant  in  the  establishment,  with  a  hard, 
dry,  parchment  face,  and — a  remarkable  talent  for  science.  The 
host  himself  was  a  splendid  animal ;  his  vast  chest  seemed  to 
occupy  more  space  at  the  table  than  any  four  of  his  guests,  yet  he 
was  not  corpulent  or  unwieldy  ;  he  was  dressed  in  black,  wore  a 
velvet  stock  very  high,  and  four  gold  studs  glittered  in  his  shirt- 
front  ;  he  was  bald  to  the  crown,  which  made  his  forehead  appear 
singularly  lofty,  and  what  hair  he  had  left  was  a  little  grayish  and 
curled  ;  his  face  was  shaved  smoothly,  except  a  close-clipped  mus- 
tache ;  and  his  eyes,  though  small,  were  bright  and  piercing. 
Such  was  the  party. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  167 

"These  are  the  best  bons-bons  I  ever  ate,'*  said  Mr.  Love, 
glancing  at  Madame  Caumartin.  "My  fair  friends,  have  com- 
passion on  the  table  of  a  poor  bachelor." 

"  But  you  ought  not  to  be  a  bachelor,  Monsieur  Lofe,"  replied 
the  fair  Rosalie,  with  an  arch  look;  "  you  who  make  others  marry, 
should  set  the  example." 

"  Allingood  time,"  answered  Mr.  Love,  nodding;  "  one  serves 
one's  customers  to  so  much  happiness  that  one  has  none  left  for 
oneself." 

Here  a  loud  explosion  was  heard.  Monsieur  Goupille  had 
pulled  one  of  the  bon-bon  crackers  with  Mademoiselle  Adele. 

"  I've  got  the  motto  !  —  no  —  Monsieur  has  it:  I'm  always  un- 
lucky," said  the  gentle  Adele. 

The  epicier  solemnly  unrolled  the  little  slip  of  paper  ;  the  print 
was  very  small,  and  he  longed  to  take  out  his  spectacles,  but  he 
thought  that  would  make  him  look  old.  However,  he  spelled 
through  the  motto  with  some  difficulty  : 

"  Comme  elle  fait  soumettre  un  coeur, 

En  refusant  son  doux  hommage, 
On  peut  trailer  la  coquette  en  vainqueur  : 
De  la  beaute  modeste  on  cherit  1'esclavage."  * 

"I  present  it  to  Mademoiselle,"  said  he,  laying  the  motto  sol- 
emnly in  Adele's  plate,  upon  a  little  mountain  of  chestnut-husks. 

"It  is  very  pretty,"  said  she,  looking  down. 

"It  is  very  apropos"  whispered  the  epicier,  caressing  the  pe- 
ruque  a  little  too  roughly  in  his  emotion.  Mr.  Love  gave  him  a 
kick  under  the  table,  and  put  his  finger  to  his  own  bald  head,  and 
then  to  his  nose  significantly.  The  intelligent  epicier  smoothed 
back  the  irritated  peruque. 

"Are  you  fond  of  bons-bons,  Mademoiselle  Adele?  I  have  a 
very  fine  stock  at  home,"  said  Moniseur  Goupille. 

Mademoiselle  Adele  de  Courval  sighed  :  "Hellas!  they  remind 
me  of  happier  days,  when  I  was  a  petite,  and  my  dear  grand- 
mamma took  me  in  her  lap  and  told  me  how  she  escaped  the  guillo- 
tine :  she  was  an  emigrte,  and  you  know  her  father  was  a  marquis.  '  ' 

The  epicier  bowed  and  looked  puzzled.  He  did  not  quite  see 
the  connection  between  the  bons-bons  and  the  guillotine. 

"You  are  triste,  Monsieur,"  observed  Madame  Beavor,  in 
rather  a  piqued  tone,  to  the  Pole,  who  had  not  said  a  word  since 
the  roti. 

"Madame,  an  exile  is  always   triste:  I  think  of  my  pauvre 


*    The  coquette,  who  subjugates  a  heart,  yet  refuses  its  tender  homage,  one  may  treat  as 
a  conqueror  :  of  modest  beauty  we  cherish  the  slavery. 


/68  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

"  Bah  !  "  cried  Mr.  Love.  "Think  that  there  is  no  exile  by 
the  side  of  a  belle  dame." 

The  Pole  smiled  mournfully. 

"  Pull  it,"  said  Madame  Beavor,  holding  a  cracker  to  the  pa- 
triot, and  turning  away  her  face. 

"Yes,  madame;  I  wish  it  were  a  cannon  in  defence  of  La  Po- 
fogne. ' ' 

With  this  magniloquent  aspiration,  the  gallant  Sovolofski  pull- 
ed lustily,  and  then  rubbed  his  fingers,  with  a  little  grimace,  ob- 
serving, that  crackers  were  sometimes  dangerous,  and  that  the 
present  combustible  was  (Fune  force  immense. 

"  Helas :  J'ai  cru  jusqu'  a  ce  jour 
Pouvoir  triompher  de  ]  "amour,"  * 

said  Madame  Beavor,  reading  the  motto  "  What  do  you  say  to 
that?" 

"Madame,  there  is  no  triumph  for  La  Pologne  /" 

Madame  Beavor  uttered  a  little  peevish  exclamation,  and 
glanced  in  despair  at  her  red-headed  countryman.  "Are  you, 
too,  a  great  politician,  sir?"  said  she,  in  English. 

"No,  mem ! — I'm  all  for  the  ladies." 

"What  does  he  say?  "  asked  Madame  Caumartin. 

"  Monsieur  Higghis  est  tout  pour  les  dames. 

"To  be  sure  he  is,"  cried  Mr.  Love;  "all  the  English  are, 
especially  with  that  colored  hair  ;  a  lady  who  likes  a  passionate 
adorer  should  always  marry  a  man  with  gold-colored  hair — 
always.  What  do  you  say,  Mademoiselle  Adele  ?  " 

"Oh,  I  like  fair  hair,"  said  Mademoiselle,  looking  bashfully 
askew  at  Monsieur  Goupille's  peruque.  "  Grandmamma  said  her 
papa — the  marquis — used  yellow  powder :  it  must  have  been  very 
pretty." 

"  Rather  a  la  sucre  d*orge,"  remarked  the  epicier,  smiling  on 
the  right  side  of  his  mouth,  where  his  best  teeth  were. 

Mademoiselle  de  Courval  looked  displeased.  "  I  fear  you  are 
a  republican,  Monsieur  Goupille?  " 

"I,  mademoiselle?  No;  I'm  for  the  Restoration";  and  again 
the  epicier  perplexed  himself  to  discover  the  association  of  idea 
between  republicanism  and  sucre  d'orge. 

"  Another  glass  of  wine.  Come,  another,"  said  Mr.  Love, 
stretching  across  the  Vicomte  to  help  Madame  Caumartin. 

"Sir,"  said  the  tall  Frenchman,  with  the  riband,  eyeing  the 
epicier  with  great  disdain,  "  you  say  you  are  for  the  Restoration — 
I  am  for  the  Empire — mot  /" 

*    Alas  !     I  believed  until  to-day  that  I  could  triumph  over  love. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  1 60 

"No  politics!"  cried  Mr.  Love.  "Let  us  adjourn  to  the 
salon." 

The  Vicomte,  who  had  seemed  supremely  ennuye  during  this 
dialogue,  plucked  Mr.  Love  by  the  sleeve  as  he  rose,  and  whis- 
pered petulantly,  "  I  do  not  see  any  one  here  to  suit  me,  Mon- 
sieur Love — none  of  my  rank." 

' '  Mon  Dieu  ! ' '  answered  Mr.  Love :  ' '  point  tf  argent  point  de 
Suisse.  I  could  introduce  you  to  a  duchess,  but  then  the  fee  is 
high.  There's  Mademoiselle  de  Courval — she  dates  from  the 
Carlovingians." 

"  She  is  very  like  a  boiled  sole,"  answered  the  Vicomte,  with  a 
wry  face.  "  Still — what  dower  has  she  ?  " 

"  Forty  thousand  francs,  and  sickly,"  replied  Mr.  Love,  "  but 
she  likes  a  tall  man,  and  Monsieur  Goupille  is 

"Tall  men  are  never  well  made,"  interrupted  the  Vicomte 
angrily  ;  and  he  drew  himself  aside  as  Mr.  Love,  gallantly  advanc- 
ing, gave  his  arm  to  Madame  Beavor,  because  the  Pole  had,  in 
rising,  folded  both  his  own  arms  across  his  breast. 

"  Excuse  me,  ma'am,"  said  Mr.  Love  to  Madame  Beavor,  as 
they  adjourned  to  the  salon,  "  I  don't  think  you  manage  that 
brave  man  well." 

44  Ma  foi,  comme  il  est  ennuyeux  avec  sa  Pologne"  replied 
Madame  Beavor,  shrugging  her  shoulders. 

4 '  True ;  but  he  is  a  very  fine-shaped  man ;  and  it  is  a  comfort  to 
think  that  one  will  have  no  rival  but  his  country.  Trust  me,  and 
encourage  him  a  little  more;  I  think  he  would  suit  you  to  a  T." 

Here  the  attendant  engaged  for  the  evening  announced  Mon- 
sieur and  Madame  Giraud ;  whereupon  there  entered  a  little — lit- 
tle couple,  very  fair,  very  plump,  and  very  like  each  other.  This 
was  Mr.  Love's  show  couple — his  decoy  ducks — his  last  best  exam- 
ple of  match-making ;  they  had  been  married  two  months  out  of 
the  bureau,  and  were  the  admiration  of  the  neighborhood  for 
their  conjugal  affection.  As  they  were  now  united,  they  had 
ceased  to  frequent  the  table  d'hote  ;  but  Mr.  Love  often  invited 
them  after  the  dessert,  pour  encourager  les  autres. 

"My  dear  friends,"  cried  Mr.  Love,  shaking  each  by  the 
hand,  "  I  am  ravished  to  see  you.  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  pre- 
sent to  you  Monsieur  and  Madame  Giraud,  the  happiest  couple  in 
Christendom ;  if  I  had  done  nothing  else  in  my  life  but  bring 
them  together,  I  should  not  have  lived  in  vain  !  " 

The  company  eyed  the  objects  of  this  eulogium  with  great 
attention. 

44  Monsieur,  my  prayer  is  to  deserve  my  bonheur"  said  Mon- 
sieur Giraud. 


170  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

"  Cher  ange  /"  murmured  Madame :  and  the  happy  pair  seated 
themselves  next  to  each  other. 

Mr.  Love,  who  was  all  for  those  innocent  pastimes  which  do 
away  with  conventional  formality  and  reserve,  now  proposed  a 
game  at  "  Hunt  the  Slipper,"  which  was  welcomed  by  the  whole 
party,  except  the  Pole  and  the  Vicomte ;  though  Mademoiselle 
Adele  looked  prudish,  and  observed  to  the  epicier,  that  Monsieur 
Lofe  was  so  droll,  but  she  should  not  have  liked  her  pauvre grand- 
maman  to  see  her." 

The  Vicomte  had  stationed  himself  opposite  to  Mademoiselle 
de  Courval,  and  kept  his  eyes  fixed  on  her  very  tenderly. 

"Mademoiselle,  I  see,  does  not  approve  of  such  bourgeois 
diversions,"  said  he. 

"No,  monsieur,"  said  the  gentle  Adele.  "But  I  think  we 
must  sacrifice  our  own  tastes  to  those  of  the  company." 

"  It  is  a  very  amiable  sentiment,"  said  the  epicier. 

"  It  is  one  attributed  to  grandmamma's  papa,  the  Marquis  de 
Courvai.  It  has  become  quite  a  hackneyed  remark  since,"  said 
Adele. 

"Come,  ladies,"  said  the  joyous  Rosalie;  "I  volunteer  my 
slipper." 

"  Asseyez-vous  done"  said  Madame  Beavor  to  the  Pole.  "Have 
you  no  games  of  this  sort  in  Poland  ?  ' ' 

"  Madame,  La  Pologue  is  no  more,"  said  the  Pole.  "  But  with 
the  swords  of  her  brave — " 

"No  swords  here,  if  you  please,"  said  Mr.  Love,  putting  his 
vast  hands  on  the  Pole's  shoulders,  and  sinking  him  forcibly  down 
into  the  circle  now  formed. 

The  game  proceeded  with  great  vigor  and  much  laughter  from 
Rosalie,  Mr.  Love,  and  Madame  Beavor,  especially  whenever  the 
last  thumped  the  Pole  with  the  heel  of  the  slipper.  Monsieur 
Giraud  was  always  sure  that  Madame  Giraud  had  the  slipper 
about  her,  which  persuasion  on  his  part  gave  rise  to  many  little 
endearments,  which  are  always  so  innocent  among  married  peo- 
ple. The  Vicomte  and  the  epicier  were  equally  certain  the  slip- 
per was  with  Mademoiselle  Adele,  who  defended  herself  with 
much  more  energy  than  might  have  been  supposed  in  one  so  gen- 
tle. The  epicier,  however,  grew  jealous  of  the  attentions  of  his 
noble  rival,  and  told  him  that  he  gene1^.  mademoiselle ;  where- 
upon the  Vicomte  called  him  an  impertinent ;  and  the  tall  French- 
man, with  the  red  riband,  sprung  up  and  said  : 

"  Can  I  be  of  any  assistance,  gentlemen?" 

Therewith  Mr.  Love,  the  great  peace-maker,  interposed,  and, 
reconciling  the  rivals,  proposed  to  change  the  game  to  Colin  Mail- 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  I  7  I 

lard,  Anglice,  "  Blind  Man's  Buff."  Rosalie  clapped  her  hands, 
and  offered  herself  to  be  blindfolded.  The  tables  and  chairs  were 
cleared  away ;  and  Madame  Beavor  pushed  the  Pole  into  Rosalie's 
arms,  who,  having  felt  him  about  the  face  for  some  moments, 
guessed  him  to  be  the  tall  Frenchman.  During  this  time  Mon- 
sieur and  Madame  Giraud  hid  themselves  behind  the  window-cur- 
tain. 

' '  Amuse  yourself,  man  ami, ' '  said  Madame  Beavor,  to  the  liber- 
ated Pole. 

"Ah,  Madame,"  sighed  Monsieur  Sovolofski,  "  how  can  I  be  gay ! 
All  my  property  confiscated  by  the  Emperor  of  Russia !  Has  La 
Pologne  no  Brutus  ?  ' ' 

"  I  think  you  are  in  love,"  said  the  host,  clapping  him  on  the 
back. 

"  Are  you  quite  sure,"  whispered  the  Pole  to  the  match-maker, 
"  that  Madame  Beavor  has  vingt  mills  livres  de  rentes?" 

' '  Not  a  sous  less. ' ' 

The  Pole  mused,  and,  glancing  at  Madame  Beavor,  said  : 
11  And  yet,  madame,  your  charming  gaiety  consoles  me  amidst 
all  my  sufferings";  upon  which  Madame  Beavor  called  him 
"  flatterer,"  and  rapped  his  knuckles  with  her  fan  ;  the  latter  pro- 
ceeding the  brave  Pole  did  not  seem  to  like,  for  he  immediately 
buried  his  hands  in  his  trousers'  pockets. 

The  game  was  now  at  its  meridian.  Rosalie  was  uncommonly 
active,  and  flew  about  here  and  there,  much  to  the  harassment  of 
the  Pole,  who  repeatedly  wiped  his  forehead,  and  observed  that 
it  was  warm  work,  and  put  him  in  mind  of  the  last  sad  battle  for 
La  Pologne.  Monsieur  Goupille,  who  had  lately  taken  lessons  in 
dancing,  and  was  vain  of  his  agility,  mounted  the  chairs  and 
tables,  as  Rosalie  approached — with  great  care  and  gravity.  It  sc 
happened  that  in  these  saltations,  he  ascended  a  stool  near  the 
curtain  behind  which  Monsieur  and  Madame  Giraud  were 
ensconced.  Somewhat  agitated  by  a  slight  flutter  behind  the 
folds,  which  made  him  fancy,  on  the  sudden  panic,  that  Rosalie 
was  creeping  that  way,  the  epicier  made  an  abrupt  pirouette,  and 
the  hook  on  which  the  curtains  were  suspended  caught  his  left 
coat-tail — 

"The  fatal  vesture  left  the  unguarded  side." 

Just  as  he  turned  to  extricate  the  garment  from  that  dilemma, 
Rosalie  sprung  upon  him,  and  naturally  lifting  her  hands  to  that 
height  where  she  fancied  the  human  face  divine,  took  another 
extremity  of  Monsieur  Goupille's  graceful  frame  thus  exposed,  by 
surprise, 


172  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

"I  don't  know  who  this  is.  Quelle  drdle  de  visage .' "  mut- 
tered Rosalie. 

"Mais,  raadame,"  faltered  Monsieur  Goupille,  looking  greatly 
disconcerted. 

The  gentle  Adele,  who  did  not  seem  to  relish  this  adventure, 
came  to  the  relief  of  her  wooer,  and  pinched  Rosalie  very  sharply 
in  the  arm. 

"  That's  not  fair.  But  I  will  know  who  this  is,"  cried  Rosalie, 
angrily;  "you  shan't  escape  !" 

A  sudden  and  universal  burst  of  laughter  roused  her  suspicions ; 
she  drew  back,  and  exclaiming:  "  Mais,  qttelle  mauvaise  plais- 
anterie  ;  c *  est  tr op  fort  !  "  applied  her  fair  hand  to  the  place  in 
dispute,  with  so  hearty  a  good-will,  that  Monsieur  Goupille  uttered 
a  dolorous  cry,  and  sprung  from  the  chair,  leaving  the  coat-tail 
(the  cause  of  all  his  woe)  suspended  upon  the  hook. 

It  was  just  at  this  moment,  and  in  the  midst  of  the  excitement 
caused  by  Monsieur  Goupille's  misfortune,  that  the  door  opened, 
and  the  attendant  reappeared,  followed  by  a  young  man  in  a  large 
cloak. 

The  new-comer  paused  at  the  threshold,  and  gazed  around  him 
in  evident  surprise. 

"  Diable  /"  said  Mr.  Love,  approaching  and  gazing  hard  at 
the  stranger.  "  Is  it  possible  ? — You  are  come  at  last  ? — Welcome !  " 

"But,"  said  the  stranger,  apparently  still  bewildered,  "there 
is  some  mistake;  you  are  not — " 

"Yes,  I  am  Mr.  Love  ! — Love  all  the  world  over.  How  is  our 
friend  Gregg  !  told  you  to  address  yourself  to  Mr.  Love, — eh  ? 
Mum  ! — Ladies  and  gentlemen,  an  acquisition  to  our  party.  Fine 
fellow,  eh  ! — Five  feet  eleven  without  his  shoes ;  and  young 
enough  to  hope  to  be  thrice  married  before  be  dies.  When  did 
you  arrive?" 

"To-day." 

And  thus  Philip  Morton  and  Mr.  William  Gawtrey  met  once 
more. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  173 

CHAPTER  II. 

"  Happy  the  man  who,  void  of  care  and  strife, 
In  silken  or  in  leathern  purse  retains 
A  splendid  shilling!" — The  Splendid  Shilling. 

"  And  wherefore  should  they  take  or  care  for  thought, 
The  unreasoning  vulgar  willingly  obey, 
And  leaving  toil  and  poverty  behind, 
Run  forth  by  different  ways,  the  blissful  boon  to  find." 

WEST'S  Education. 

"  POOR  boy  !  your  story  interests  me.  The  events  are  romantic, 
but  the  moral  is  practical,  old,  everlasting — life,  boy,  life.  Pov- 
erty by  itself  is  no  such  great  curse ;  that  is,  if  it  stops  short  of 
starving.  And  passion  by  itself  is  a  noble  thing,  sir;  but  poverty 
and  passion  together — poverty  and  feeling — poverty  and  pride — 
the  poverty  one  is  not  born  to,  but  falls  into — and  the  man  who 
ousts  you  out  of  your  easy  chair,  kicking  you  with  every  turn  he 
takes,  as  he  settles  himself  more  comfortably — why,  there's  no 
romance  in  that — hard,  every-day  life,  sir  !  Well,  well — so  after 
your  brother's  letter  you  resigned  yourself  to  that  fellow  Smith." 

"No ;  I  gave  him  my  money,  not  my  soul.  I  turned  from  his 
door,  with  a  few  shillings  that  he  himself  thrust  into  my  hand, 
and  walked  on,  I  cared  not  whither — out  of  the  town,  into  the 
fields — till  night  came ;  and  then,  just  as  I  suddenly  entered  on 
the  high-road,  many  miles  away,  the  moon  rose ;  and  I  saw,  by 
the  hedge-side,  something  that  seemed  like  a  corpse :  it  was  an 
old  beggar,  in  the  last  state  of  raggedness,  disease,  and  famine. 
He  had  laid  himself  down  to  die.  I  shared  with  him  what  I  had, 
and  helped  him  to  a  little  inn.  As  he  crossed  the  threshold,  he 
turned  round  and  blessed  me.  Do  you  know,  the  moment  I  heard 
that  blessing,  a  stone  seemed  rolled  away  from  my  heart.  I  said 
to  myself,  '  What  then  !  even  /  can  be  of  use  to  some  one ;  and 
I  am  better  off  than  that  old  man,  for  I  have  youth  and  health.' 
As  these  thoughts  stirred  in  me,  my  limbs,  before  heavy  with 
fatigue,  grew  light;  a  strange  kind  of  excitement  seized  me.  I 
ran  on  gaily,  beneath  the  moonlight,  that  smiled  over  the  crisp, 
broad  road.  I  felt  as  if  no  house,  not  even  a  palace,  were  large 
enough  for  me  that  night.  And  when,  at  last,  wearied  out,  I 
crept  into  a  wood,  and  laid  myself  down  to  sleep,  I  still  mur- 
mured to  myself,  'I  have  youth  and  health.'  But,  in  the  morn- 
ing, when  I  rose,  I  stretched  out  my  arms,  and  missed  my  brother  ! 
....  In  two  or  three  days  I  found  employment  with  a  farmer ; 
but  we  quarreled  after  a  few  weeks ;  for  once  he  wished  to  strike 


174  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

me :  and  somehow  or  other,  I  could  work,  but  not  serve.  Winter 
had  begun  when  we  parted.  Oh,  such  a  winter  !  Then — then  £ 
knew  what  it  was  to  be  houseless.  How  I  lived  for  some  months 
— if  to  live  it  can  be  called — it  would  pain  you  to  hear,  and 
humble  me  to  tell.  At  last,  I  found  myself  again  in  London ; 
and  one  evening,  not  many  days  since,  I  resolved  at  last — for 
nothing  else  seemed  left,  and  I  had  not  touched  food  for  two  days 
• — to  come  to  you." 

"And  why  did  that  never  occur  to  you  before?" 

"Because,"  said  Philip,  with  a  deep  blush,  "because  I  trem- 
bled at  the  power  over  my  actions  and  my  future  life  that  I  was 
to  give  to  one,  whom  I  was  to  bless  as  a  benefactor,  yet  distrust 
as  a  guide." 

"  Well,"  said  Love,  or  Gawtrey,  with  a  singular  mixture  of 
irony  and  compassion  in  his  voice;  "and  it  was  hunger,  then, 
that  terrified  you  at  last  even  more  than  I?  " 

"Perhaps  hunger, — or  perhaps  rather  the  reasoning  that  comes 
from  hunger.  I  had  not,  I  say,  touched  food  for  two  days ;  and 
I  was  standing  on  that  bridge,  from  which  on  one  side  you  see 
the  palace  of  a  head  of  the  Church,  on  the  other  the  towers  of 
the  Abbey,  within  which  the  men  I  have  read  of  in  history  lie 
buried.  It  was  a  cold,  frosty  evening,  and  the  river  below  looked 
bright  with  the  lamps  and  stars.  I  leaned,  weak  and  sickening, 
against  the  wall  of  the  bridge;  and  in  one  of  the  arched  recesses 
beside  me  a  cripple  held  out  his  hat  for  pence.  I  envied  him  ! 
He  had  a  livelihood ;  he  was  inured  to  it,  perhaps  bred  to  it ;  he 
had  no  shame.  By  a  sudden  impulse,  I,  too,  turned  abruptly 
round,  held  out  my  hand  to  the  first  passenger,  and  started  at  the 
shrillness  of  my  own  voice,  as  it  cried  '  Charity.' ' 

Gawtrey  threw  another  log  on  the  fire,  looked  complacently 
round  the  comfortable  room,  and  rubbed  his  hands.  The  young 
man  continued : 

"  'You  should  be  ashamed  of  yourself.  I've  a  great  mind  to 
give  you  to  the  police,'  was  the  answer,  in  a  pert  and  sharp  tone. 
I  looked  up,  and  saw  the  livery  my  father's  menials  had  worn.  I 
had  been  begging  my  bread  from  Robert  Beaufort's  lackey !  I 
said  nothing ;  the  man  went  on  to  business  on  tiptoe,  that  the 
mud  might  not  splash  above  the  soles  of  his  shoes.  Then, 
thoughts  so  black  that  they  seemed  to  blot  out  every  star  from  the 
sky — thoughts,  I  had  often  wrestled  against,  but  to  which  I  now 
gave  myself  up  with  a  sort  of  mad  joy — seized  me :  and  I 
remembered  you.  I  had  still  preserved  the  address  you  gave  me ; 
I  went  straight  to  the  house.  Your  friend,  on  naming  you, 
received  me  kindly,  and  without  question,  placed  food  before 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  175 

me ;  pressed  on  me  clothing  and  money ;  procured  me  a  pass- 
port ;  gave  me  your  address,  and  now  I  am  beneath  your  roof. 
Gawtrey,  I  know  nothing  yet  of  the  world,  but  the  dark  side  of 
it.  I  know  not  what  to  deem  you ;  but  as  you  alone  have  been 
kind  to  me,  so  it  is  to  your  kindness  rather  than  your  aid,  that  I 
now  cling;  your  kind  words  and  kind  looks — yet — "  :  he  stop- 
ped short,  and  breathed  hard. 

"Yet  you  would  know  more  of  me.  Faith,  my  boy,  I  cannot 
tell  you  more  at  this  moment.  I  believe,  to  speak  fairly,  I  don't 
live  exactly  within  the  pale  of  the  law.  But  I'm  not  a  villain  !  I 
never  plundered  my  friend  and  called  it  play  !  I  never  murdered 
my  friend  and  called  it  honor  !  I  never  seduced  my  friend's  wife 
and  called  it  gallantry!"  As  Gawtrey  said  this,  he  drew  the 
words  out,  one  by  one,  through  his  grinded  teeth,  paused,  and 
resumed  more  gaily:  "I  struggle  with  Fortune;  voila  toiit !  I 
am  not  what  you  seem  to  suppose — not  exactly  a  swindler,  cer- 
tainly not  a  robber  !  But,  as  I  before  told  you,  I  am  a  charlatan ; 
so  is  every  man  who  strives  to  be  richer  or  greater  than  he  is.  I, 
too,  want  kindness  as  much  as  you  do.  My  bread  and  my  cup 
are  at  your  service.  I  will  try  and  keep  you  unsullied,  even  by 
the  clean  dirt  that  now  and  then  sticks  to  me.  On  the  other 
hand,  youth,  my  young  friend,  has  no  right  to  play  the  censor; 
and  you  must  take  me  as  you  take  the  world,  without  being  over- 
scrupulous and  dainty.  My  present  vocation  pays  well ;  in  fact, 
I  am  beginning  to  lay  by.  My  real  name  and  past  life  are  thor- 
oughly unknown,  and  as  yet  unsuspected  in  this  quartier ;  for 
though  I  have  seen  much  of  Paris,  my  career  hitherto  has  passed 
in  other  parts  of  the  city ;  and  for  the  rest,  own  that  I  am  well 
disguised  !  What  a  benevolent  air  this  bald  forehead  gives  me — 
eh?  True,"  added  Gawtrey,  somewhat  more  seriously,  "  if  1 
saw  how  you  could  support  yourself  in  a  broader  path  of  life 
than  that  in  which  I  pick  out  my  own  way,  I  might  say  to  you,  as 
a  gay  man  of  fashion  might  say  to  some  sober  stripling — nay,  as 
many  a  dissolute  father  says  (or  ought  to  say)  to  his  son ;  '  It  is 
no  reason  you  should  be  a  sinner,  because  I  am  not  a  saint.'  In 
a  word,  if  you  were  well  off  in  a  respectable  profession,  you 
might  have  safer  acquaintances  than  myself.  But,  as  it  is,  upon 
my  word  as  a  plain  man,  I  don't  see  what  you  can  do  better." 
Gawtrey  made  this  speech  with  so  much  frankness  and  ease,  that 
it  seemed  greatly  to  relieve  the  listener,  and  when  he  wound  up 
with,  "  What  say  you?  In  fine,  my  life  is  that  of  a  great  school- 
boy, getting  into  scrapes  for  the  fun  of  it,  and  fighting  his  way 
out  as  he  best  can !  Will  you  see  how  you  like  it  ?  "  Philip, 
with  a  confiding  and  grateful  impulse,  put  his  hand  into  Gaw- 


176  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

trey's.  The  host  shook  it  cordially,  and,  without  saying  another 
word,  showed  his  guest  into  a  little  cabinet  where  there  was  a 
sofa-bed,  and  they  parted  for  the  night. 

The  new  life  upon  which  Philip  Morton  entered  was  so  odd,  so 
grotesque,  and  so  amusing,  that  at  his  age  it  was,  perhaps,  natural 
that  he  should  not  be  clear-sighted  as  to  its  danger. 

William  Gawtrey  was  one  of  those  men  who  are  born  to  exert 
a  certain  influence  and  ascendancy  wherever  they  may  be  thrown  ; 
his  vast  strength,  his  redundant  health,  had  a  power  of  them- 
selves— a  moral  as  well  as  physical  power.  He  naturally  poss- 
essed high  animal  spirits,  beneath  the  surface  of  which,  however, 
at  times,  there  was  visible  a  certain  under-current  of  malignity 
and  scorn.  He  had  evidently  received  a  superior  education,  and 
could  command  at  will  the  manners  of  a  man  not  unfamiliar  with 
a  politer  class  of  society.  From  the  first  hour  that  Philip  had 

seen  him  on  the  top  of  the  coach  on  the  R road,  this  man 

had  attracted  his  curiosity  and  interest ;  the  conversation  he  had 
heard  in  the  churchyard,  the  obligations  he  owed  to  Gawtrey  in 
his  escape  from  the  officers  of  justice,  the  time  afterwards  passed 
in  his  society  till  they  separated  at  the  little  inn,  the  rough  and 
hearty  kindliness  Gawtrey  had  shown  him  at  that  period,  and  the 
hospitality  extended  to  him  now, — all  contributed  to  excite  his 
fancy,  and  in  much,  indeed  very  much,  entitled  this  singular  per- 
son to  his  gratitude.  Morton,  in  a  word,  was  fascinated;  this 
man  was  the  only  friend  he  had  made.  I  have  not  thought  it 
necessary  to  detail  to  the  reader  the  conversations  that  had  taken 
place  between  them,  during  that  passage  of  Morton's  life  when 
he  was  before  for  some  days  Gawtrey's  companion ;  yet  those 
conversations  had  sunk  deep  in  his  mind.  He  was  struck,  and 
almost  awed,  by  the  profound  gloom  which  lurked  under  Gaw- 
trey's broad  humor — a  gloom,  not  of  temperament,  but  of  know- 
ledge. His  views  of  life,  of  human  justice  and  human  virtue, 
were  (as,  to  be  sure,  is  commonly  the  case  with  men  who  have 
had  reason  to  quarrel  with  the  world)  dreary  and  despairing ;  and 
Morton's  own  experience  had  been  so  sad,  that  these  opinions 
were  more  influential  than  they  could  ever  have  been  with  the 
happy.  However  in  this,  their  second  re-union,  there  was  a 
greater  gaiety  than  in  their  first :  and  under  his  host's  roof  Mor- 
ton insensibly,  but  rapidly,  recovered  something  of  the  early  and 
natural  tone  of  his  impetuous  and  ardent  spirits.  Gawtrey  him- 
self was  generally  a  boon  companion  ;  their  society,  if  not  select, 
was  merry.  When  their  evenings  were  disengaged,  Gawtrey  was 
fond  of  haunting  cafts  and  theatres,  and  Morton  was  his  com- 
panion; Birnie  (Mr.  Gawtrey's  partner)  never  accompanied  them. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  177 

Refreshed  by  this  change  of  life,  the  very  person  of  this  young 
man  regained  its  bloom  and  vigor,  as  a  plant,  removed  from  some 
choked  atmosphere  and  unwholesome  soil,  where  it  had  struggled 
for  light  and  air,  expands  on  transplanting;  the  graceful  leaves 
burst  from  the  long-drooping  boughs,  and  the  elastic  crest  springs 
upward  to  the  sun  in  the  glory  of  its  young  prime.  If  there  was 
still  a  certain  fiery  sternness  in  his  aspect,  it  had  ceased,  at  least, 
to  be  haggard  and  savage ;  it  even  suited  the  character  of  his 
dark  and  expressive  features.  He  might  not  have  lost  the  some- 
thing of  the  tiger  in  his  fierce  temper,  but  in  the  sleek  hues  and 
the  sinewy  symmetry  of  the  frame,  he  began  to  put  forth  also 
something  of  the  tiger's  beauty. 

Mr.  Birnie  did  not  sleep  in  the  house,  he  went  home  nightly  to 
a  lodging  at  some  little  distance.  We  have  said  but  little  about 
this  man,  for,  to  all  appearance,  there  was  little  enough  to  say ; 
he  rarely  opened  his  own  mouth  except  to  Gawtrey,  with  whom 
Philip  often  observed  him  engaged  in  whispered  conference,  to 
which  he  was  not  admitted.  His  eye,  however,  was  less  idle  than 
his  lips ;  it  was  not  a  bright  eye ;  on  the  contrary,  it  was  dull, 
and,  to  the  unobservant,  lifeless,  of  a  pale  blue,  with  a  dim  film 
over  it — the  eye  of  a  vulture ;  but  it  had  in  it  a  calm,  heavy, 
stealthy  watchfulness,  which  inspired  Morton  with  great  distrust 
and  aversion.  Mr.  Birnie  not  only  spoke  French  like  a  native, 
but  all  his  habits,  his  gestures,  his  tricks  of  manner,  were  French ; 
not  the  French  of  good  society,  but  more  idiomatic,  as  it  were, 
and  popular.  He  was  not  exactly  a  vulgar  person — he  was  too 
silent  for  that — but  he  was  evidently  of  low  extraction  and  coarse 
breeding;  his  accomplishments  were  of  a  mechanical  nature  ;  he 
was  an  extraordinary  arithmetician  ;  he  was  a  very  skilful  chemist, 
and  kept  a  laboratory  at  his  lodgings ;  he  mended  his  own  clothes 
and  linen  with  incomparable  neatness.  Philip  suspected  him  of 
blacking  his  own  shoes,  but  that  was  prejudice.  Once  he  found 
Morton  sketching  horses'  heads — pour  se  desennuyer ;  and  he 
made  some  short  criticism  on  the  drawings,  which  showed  him 
well  acquainted  with  the  art.  Philip,  surprised,  sought  to  draw 
him  into  conversation ;  but  Birnie  eluded  the  attempt,  and  observed 
that  he  had  once  been  an  engraver. 

Gawtrey  himself  did  not  seem  to  know  much  of  the  early  life 
of  this  person,  or  at  least  he  did  not  seem  to  like  much  to  talk  of 
him.  The  foot-step  of  Mr.  Birnie  was  gliding,  noiseless,  and  cat- 
like; he  had  no  sociality  in  him — enjoying  nothing,  drank  hard, 
but  was  never  drunk.  Somehow  or  other,  he  had  evidently  over 
Gawtrey  an  influence  little  less  than  that  which  Gawtrey  had  over 
Morton,  but  it  was  of  a  different  nature  :  Morton  had  conceived 


178  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

an  extraordinary  affection  for  his  friend,  while  Gavvtrey  seemed 
secretly  to  dislike  Birnie,  and  to  be  glad  whenever  he  quitted  his 
presence.  It  was,  in  truth,  Gawtrey's  custom  when  Birnie  retired 
for  the  night,  to  rub  his  hands,  bring  out  the  punch-bowl,  squeeze 
the  lemons,  and  while  Philip,  stretched  on  the  sofa,  listened  to 
him,  between  sleep  and  waking,  to  talk  on  for  the  hour  together, 
often  till  daybreak, with  that  bizarre  mixture  of  knavery  and  feel- 
ing, drollery  and  sentiment,  which  made  the  dangerous  charm  of 
his  society. 

One  evening  as  they  thus  sat  together,  Morton,  after  listening  for 
some  time  to  his  companion's  comments  on  men  and  things,  said 
abruptly  : 

' '  Gawtrey  !  there  is  so  much  in  you  that  puzzles  me,  so  much 
which  I  find  it  difficult  to  reconcile  with  your  present  pursuits, 
that,  if  I  ask  no  indiscreet  confidence,  I  should  like  greatly  to  hear 
some  account  of  your  early  life.  It  would  please  me  to  compare 
it  with  my  own  ;  when  I  am  your  age.  I  will  then  look  back  and 
see  what  I  owed  to  your  example." 

' '  My  early  life  !  Well,  you  shall  hear  it.  It  will  put  you  on 
your  guard.  I  hope,  betimes  against  the  two  rocks  of  youth — love 
and  friendship.''  Then,  while  squeezing  the  lemon  into  his 
favorite  beverage,  which  Morton  observed  he  made  stronger  than 
usual,  Gawtrey  thus  commenced 

THE  HISTORY   OF  A  GOOD-FOR-NOTHING. 

CHAPTER  III. 

"All  his  success  must  on  himself  depend, 
He  had  no  money,  counsel,  guide,  or  friend ; 
With  spirit  high,  John  learn'd  the  world  to  brave, 
And  in  both  senses  was  a  ready  knave." — CRABBE. 

"  MY  grandfather  sold  walking-sticks  and  umbrellas  in  the  lit- 
tle passage  by  Exeter  'Change  ;  he  was  a  man  of  genius  and 
speculation.  As  soon  as  he  had  scraped  together  a  little  money, 
he  lent  it  to  some  poor  devil  with  a  hard  landlord,  at  twenty  per 
cent.,  and  made  him  take  half  the  loan  in  umbrellas  or  bamboos. 
By  these  means  he  got  bis  foot  into  the  ladder,  and  climbed 
upward  and  upward,  till,  at  the  age  of  forty,  he  had  amassed 
^5000.  He  then  looked  about  for  a  wife.  An  honest  trader  in 
the  Strand,  who  dealt  largely  in  cotton  prints,  possessed  an  only 
daughter ;  this  young  lady  had  a  legacy,  from  a  great  aunt,  of 
^3220,  with  a  small  street  in  St.  Giles's,  where  the  tenants  paid 
weekly  (all  thieves  or  rogues — all,  so  their  rents  were  sure).  Now 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  179 

my  grandfather  conceived  a  great  friendship  for  the  father  of  this 
young  lady;  gave  him  a  hint  as  to  a  new  pattern  in  spotted 
cottons ;  enticed  him  to  take  out  a  patent,  and  lent  him  -£700 
for  the  speculation,  applied  for  the  money  at  the  very  moment 
cottons  were  at  their  worst,  and  got  the  daughter  instead  of  the 
money, — by  which  exchange,  you  see,  he  won  ^2520,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  young  lady.  My  grandfather  then  entered  into 
partnership  with  the  worthy  trader,  carried  on  the  patent  with 
spirit,  and  begat  two  sons.  As  he  grew  older,  ambition  seized 
him ,  his  sons  should  be  gentlemen — one  was  sent  to  College,  the 
other  put  into  a  marching  regiment.  My  grandfather  meant  to 
die  worth  a  plum ;  but  a  fever  he  caught  in  visiting  his  tenants  in 
St.  Giles's  prevented  him,  and  he  only  left  ^£20,000,  equally 
divided  between  the  sons.  My  father,  the  College  man  "  (here 
Gawtrey  paused  a  moment,  took  a  large  draught  of  the  punch, 
and  resumed  with  a  visible  effort),  ' '  my  father,  the  College  man, 
was  a  person  of  rigid  principles — bore  an  excellent  character — 
had  a  great  regard  for  the  world.  He  married  early  and  respect- 
ably. I  am  the  sole  fruit  of  that  union  ;  he  lived  soberly,  his  tem- 
per was  harsh  and  morose,  his  home  gloomy ;  he  was  a  very- 
severe  father,  and  my  mother  died  before  I  was  ten  years  old. 
When  I  was  fourteen,  a  little  old  Frenchman  came  to  lodge  with 
us ;  he  had  been  persecuted  under  the  old  regime  for  being  a  phil- 
osopher; he  filled  my  head  with  odd  crotchets  which,  more  or 
less,  have  stuck  there  ever  since.  At  eighteen  I  was  sent  to  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge.  My  father  was  rich  enough  to  have 
let  me  go  up  in  the  higher  rank  of  a  pensioner,  but  he  had  lately 
grown  avaricious ;  he  thought  that  I  was  extravagant ;  he  made 
me  a  sizar,  perhaps  to  spite  me.  Then,  for  the  first  time,  those 
inequalities  in  life  which  the  Frenchman  had  dinned  into  my  ears 
met  me  practically.  A  sizar  !  another  name  for  a  dog  !  I  had 
such  strength,  health,  and  spirits,  that  I  had  more  life  in  my  lit- 
tle finger  than  half  the  fellow-commoners — genteel,  spindle-shank- 
ed striplings,  who  might  have  passed  for  a  collection  of  my  grand- 
father's walking-canes — had  in  their  whole  bodies.  And  I  often 
think,"  continued  Gawtrey,  "  that  health  and  spirits  have  a  great 
deal  to  answer  for  !  When  we  are  young  we  so  far  resemble  sav- 
ages— who  are  Nature's  young  people — that  we  attach  prodigious 
value  to  physical  advantages.  My  feats  of  strength  and  activity 
— the  clods  I  thrashed,  and  the  railings  I  leaped,  and  the  boat 
races  I  Avon — are  they  not  written  in  the  chronicle  of  St.  John's? 
These  achievements  inspired  me  with  an  extravagant  sense  of  my 
own  superiority ;  I  could  not  but  despise  the  rich  fellows  whom  I 
could  have  blown  down  with  a  sneeze.  Nevertheless,  there  was 


l8o  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

an  impassable  barrier  between  me  and  them — a  sizar  was  not  a 
proper  associate  for  the  favorites  of  fortune  !  But  there  was  one 
young  man,  a  year  younger  than  myself,  of  high  birth,  and  the 
heir  to  considerable  wealth,  who  did  not  regard  me  with  the  same 
supercilious  insolence  as  the  rest ;  his  very  rank,  perhaps,  made 
him  indifferent  to  the  little  conventional  formalities  which  influ- 
ence persons  who  cannot  play  at  football  with  this  round  world ; 
he  was  the  wildest  youngster  in  the  university — lamp-breaker, 
tandem-driver,  mob-fighter,  a  vejy  devil  in  short — clever,  but  not 
in  the  reading  line — small  and  slight,  but  brave  as  a  lion.  Con- 
genial habits  made  us  intimate,  and  I  loved  him  like  a  brother — 
better  than  a  brother — as  a  dog  loves  his  master.  In  all  our  rows 
I  covered  him  with  my  body.  He  had  but  to  say  to  me,  '  Leap 
into  the  water,'  and  I  would  not  have  stopped  to  pull  off  my  coat. 
In  short,  I  loved  him  as  a  proud  man  loves  one  who  stands  be- 
twixt him  and  contempt ;  as  an  affectionate  man  loves  one  who 
stands  between  him  and  solitude.  To  cut  short  a  long  story :  Vny 
friend,  one  dark  night,  committed  an  outrage  against  discipline 
of  the  most  unpardonable  character.  There  was  a  sanctimonious, 
grave,  old  fellow  of  the  College  crawling  home  from  a  tea-party  ; 
my  friend  and  another  of  his  set  seized,  blindfolded,  and  hand- 
cuffed this  poor  wretch,  carried  him,  vi  et  armis,  back  to  the 
house  of  an  old  maid  whom  he  had  been  courting  for  the  last  ten 
years,  fastened  his  pigtail  (he  wore  a  long  one)  to  the  knocker, 
and  so  left  him.  You  may  imagine  the  infernal  hubbub  which 
his  attempts  to  extricate  himself  caused  in  the  whole  street ;  the 
old  maid's  old  maid-servant,  after  emptying  on  his  head  all  the 
vessels  of  wrath  she  could  lay  her  hand  to,  screamed,  '  Rape  and 
murder !  "  The  proctor  and  his  bull-dogs  came  up,  released  the 
prisoner,  and  gave  chase  to  the  delinquents,  who  had  incautiously 
remained  near  to  enjoy  the  sport.  The  night  was  dark  and  they 
reached  the  College  in  safety,  but  they  had  been  tracked  to  the 
gates.  For  this  offense  /was  expelled." 

"  Why,  you  were  not  concerned  in  it?"  said  Philip. 

"  No  ;  but  I  was  suspected  and  accused.  I  could  have  got  off 
by  betraying  the  true  culprits,  but  my  friend's  father  was  in  pub- 
lic life — a  stern,  haughty,  old  statesman  ;  my  friend  was  mortally 
afraid  of  him — the  only  person  he  was  afraid  of.  If  I  had  too 
much  insisted  on  my  innocence,  I  might  have  set  inquiry  on  the 
right  track.  In  fine,  I  was  happy  to  prove  my  friendship  for 
him.  He  shook  me  most  tenderly  by  the  hand  on  parting,  and 
promised  never  to  forget  my  generous  devotion.  I  went  home  in 
disgrace  :  I  need  not  tell  you  what  my  father  said  to  me  ;  I  do 
not  think  he  ever  loved  me  from  that  hour.  Shortly  after  this,  my 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  ii 

uncle,  George  Gawtrey,  the  captain,  returned  from  abroad ;  he 
took  a  great  fancy  to  me,  and  I  left  my  father's  house  (which  had 
grown  insufferable)  to  live  with  him.  He  had  been  a  very  hand- 
pome  man — a  gay  spendthrift ;  he  had  got  through  his  fortune, 
and  now  lived  on  his  wits :  he  was  a  professed  gambler.  His  easy 
temper,  his  lively  humor,  fascinated  me ;  he  knew  the  world  well ; 
and,  like  all  gamblers,  was  generous  when  the  dice  were  lucky, 
which,  to  tell  you  the  truth,  they  generally  were,  with  a  man  who 
had  no  scruples.  Though  his  practices  were  a  little  suspected, 
they  had  never  been  discovered.  We  lived  in  an  elegant  apart- 
ment, mixed  familiarly  with  men  of  various  ranks,  and  enjoyed 
life  extremely.  I  brushed  off  my  college  rust,  and  conceived  a 
)aste  for  expense  :  I  knew  not  why  it  was,  but  in  my  new  existence 
every  one  was  kind  to  me ;  and  I  had  spirits  that  made  me  wel- 
come everywhere.  I  was  a  scamp — but  a  frolicsome  scamp — and 
that  is  always  a  popular  character.  As  yet  I  was  not  dishonest, 
but  saw  dishonesty  round  me,  and  it  seemed  a  very  pleasant,  jolly 
mode  of  making  money;  and  now  I  again  fell  into  contact  with 
the  young  heir.  My  college  friend  was  as  wild  in  London  as  he 
had  been  at  Cambridge;  but  the  boy-ruffian,  though  not  then 
twenty  years  of  age,  had  grown  into  the  man-villain." 

Here  Gawtrey  paused,  and  frowned  darkly. 

"He  had  great  natural  parts,  this  young  man;  much  wit, 
readiness,  and  cunning,  and  he  became  very  intimate  with  my 
uncle.  He  learned  of  him  how  to  play  the  dice,  and  to  pack  the 
cards — he  paid  him  ^1000  for  the  knowledge !  " 

"  How  !   a  cheat?  You  said  he  was  rich." 

"  His  father  was  very  rich,  and  he  had  a  liberal  allowance,  but 
he  was  very  extravagant ;  and  rich  men  love  gain  as  well  as  poor 
men  do  !  He  had  no  excuse  but  the  grand  excuse  of  all  vice — SEL- 
FISHNESS. Young  as  he  was  he  became  the  fashion,  and  he  fat- 
tened upon  the  plunder  of  his  equals,  who  desired  the  honor  of 
his  acquaintance.  Now,  I  had  seen  my  uncle  cheat,  but  I  had 
never  imitated  his  example ;  when  the  man  of  fashion  cheated, 
and  made  a  jest  of  his  earnings  and  my  scruples  ;  when  I  saw 
him  courted,  flattered,  honored,  and  his  acts  unsuspected,  because 
his  connections  embraced  half  the  peerage,  the  temptation  grew 
strong,  but  I  still  resisted  it.  However,  my  father  always  said  I 
was  born  to  be  a  good-for-nothing,  and  I  could  not  escape  my 
destiny.  And  now  I  suddenly  fell  in  love — you  don't  know  what 
that  is  yet — so  much  the  better  for  you.  The  girl  was  beautiful, 
and  I  thought  she  loved  me — perhaps  she  did — but  I  was  too 
poor,  so  her  friends  said,  for  marriage.  We  courted,  as  the  say- 
ing is,  in  the  meanwhile.  It  was  my  love  for  her,  my  wish  to 


I&2  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

deserve  her,  that  made  me  iron  against  my  friend's  example.  I 
was  fool  enough  to  speak  to  him  of  Mary,  to  present  him  to  her : 
this  ended  in  her  seduction."  (Again  Gawtrey  paused,  and 
breathed  hard.)  "  I  discovered  the  treachery;  I  called  out  the 
seducer  ;  he  sneered  and  refused  to  fight  the  lowborn  adventurer. 
I  struck  him  to  the  earth — and  then  we  fought.  I  was  satisfied 
by  a  ball  through  my  side  !  but  he,"  added  Gawtrey,  rubbing  his 
hands,  and  with  a  vindictive  chuckle, — "he  was  a  cripple  for 
life  !  When  I  recovered  I  found  that  my  foe,  whose  sick  chamber 
was  crowded  with  friends  and  comforters,  had  taken  advantage 
of  my  illness  to  ruin  my  reputation.  He,  the  swindler,  accused  me 
of  his  own  crime  :  the  equivocal  character  of  my  uncle  confirmed 
the  charge.  Him,  his  own  high-born  pupil  was  enabled  to 
unmask,  and  his  disgrace  was  visited  on  me.  I  left  my  bed,  to 
find  my  uncle  (all  disguise  over)  an  avowed  partner  in  a  hell ;  and 
myself,  blasted  alike  in  name,  love,  past  and  future.  And  then, 
Philip, — then  I  commenced  that  career  which  I  have  trodden 
since,  the  prince  of  good -fellows  and  good-for-nothings;  with 
ten  thousand  aliases,  and  as  many  strings  to  my  bow.  Society 
cast  me  off  when  I  was  innocent.  Egad,  I  have  had  my  revenge 
on  society  since  !  Ho  !  ho  !  ho  !  " 

The  laugh  of  this  man  had  in  it  a  moral  infection.  There  was 
a  sort  of  glorying  in  its  deep  tone ;  it  was  not  the  hollow  hysteric 
of  shame  and  despair — it  spoke  a  sanguine  joyousness !  William 
Gawtrey  was  a  man  whose  animal  constitution  had  led  him  to 
take  animal  pleasure  in  all  things :  he  had  enjoyed  the  poisons  he 
had  lived  on. 

"But  your  father, — surely  your  father " 

"My  father,"  interrupted  Gawtrey,  "refused  me  the  money — 
(but  a  small  sum) — that,  once  struck  with  the  strong  impulse  of  a 
sincere  penitence,  I  begged  of  him,  to  enable  me  to  get  an  honest 
living  in  an  humble  trade  :  his  refusal  soured  the  penitence ;  it 
gave  me  an  excuse  for  my  career  ;  and  conscience  grapples  to  an 
excuse  as  a  drowning  wretch  to  a  straw.  And  yet  this  hard  father 
— this  cautious,  moral,  money-loving  man — three  months  after- 
wards, suffered  a  rogue — almost  a  stranger — to  decoy  him  into  a 
speculation  that  promised  to  bring  him  fifty  per  cent.  :  he  invested 
in  the  traffic  of  usury  what  had  sufficed  to  save  a  hundred  such  as 
I  am  from  perdition,  and  he  lost  it  all ;  it  was  nearly  his  whole 
fortune;  but  he  lives  and  has  his  luxuries  still :  he  cannot  specu- 
late, but  he  can  save :  he  cared  not  if  I  starved,  for  he  finds  an 
hourly  happiness  in  starving  himself." 

"And  your  friend,"  said  Philip,  after  a  pause  in  which  his 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING  183 

young  sympathies  went  dangerously  with  the  excuses  for  his  bene- 
factor ;   ' '  what  has  become  of  him,  and  the  poor  girl  ?  ' ' 

' '  My  friend  became  a  great  man  ;  he  succeeded  to  his  father's 
peerage — a  very  ancient  one — and  to  a  splendid  income.  He  is  liv- 
ing still.  Well,  you  shall  hear  about  the  poor  girl !  We  are  told 
of  victims  of  seduction  dying  in  a  workhouse,  or  on  a  dunghill, 
penitent,  broken-hearted,  and  uncommonly  ragged  and  sentimen- 
tal ;  it  may  be  a  frequent  case,  but  it  is  not  the  worst.  It  is 
worse,  I  think,  when  the  fair,  penitent,  innocent,  credulous  dupe 
becomes  in  her  turn  the  deceiver ;  when  she  catches  vice  from 
the  breath  upon  which  she  has  hung ;  when  she  ripens,  and  mel- 
lows, and  rots  away  into  painted,  blazing,  staring,  wholesale  har- 
lotry; when,  in  her  turn,  she  ruins  warm  youth  with  false  smiles 
and  long  bills ;  and  when  worse — worse  than  all,  when  she  has 
children,  daughters  perhaps,  brought  up  to  the  same  trade, 
cooped,  plumped,  for  some  hoary  lecher,  without  a  heart  in  their 
bosoms,  unless  a  balance  for  weighing  money  may  be  called  a 
heart :  Mary  became  this ;  and  I  wish  to  Heaven  she  had  rather 
died  in  an  hospital !  Her  lover  polluted  her  soul  as  well  as  her 
beauty  :  he  found  her  another  lover  when  he  was  tired  of  her. 
When  she  was  at  the  age  of  thirty-six,  I  met  her  in  Paris,  with  a 
daughter  of  sixteen.  I  was  then  flush  with  money,  frequenting 
salons,  and  playing  the  part  of  a  fine  gentleman ;  she  did  not 
know  me  at  first ;  and  she  sought  my  acquaintance.  For  you 
must  know,  my  young  friend,"  said  Gawtrey,  abruptly  breaking 
off  the  thread  of  his  narrative,  ' '  that  I  am  not  altogether  the  low 
dog  you  might  suppose  in  seeing  me  here.  At  Paris — ah  !  you 
don't  know  Paris — there  is  a  glorious  ferment  in  society  in  which 
the  dregs  are  often  uppermost !  I  came  here  at  the  Peace ;  and 
here  have  I  resided  the  greater  part  of  each  year  ever  since.  The 
vast  masses  of  energy  and  life,  broken  up  by  the  great  thaw  of 
the  Imperial  system,  floating  along  the  tide,  are  terrible  icebergs 
for  the  vessel  of  the  state.  Some  think  Napoleonism  over ;  its 
effects  are  only  begun.  Society  is  shattered  from  one  end  to  the 
other,  and  I  laugh  at  the  little  rivets  by  which  they  think  to  keep 
it  together.*  But  to  return,  Paris,  I  say,  is  the  atmosphere  for 
adventurers  ;  new  faces  and  new  men  are  so  common  here  that 
they  excite  no  impertinent  inquiry,  it  is  so  usual  to  see  fortunes 
made  in  a  day  and  spent  in  a  month  ;  except  in  certain  circles, 
there  is  no  walking  round  a  man's  character  to  spy  out  where  it 
wants  piercing !  Some  lean  Greek  poet  put  lead  in  his  pockets  to 
prevent  being  blown  away ;  put  gold  in  your  pockets,  and  at  Paris 

*This  passage  was  written  at  a  period  when  the  dynasty  of  Louis  Philippe  seemed  the 
most  assured,  and  Napoleonism  was  indeed  considered  extinct. 


184  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

you  may  defy  the  sharpest  wind  in  the  world, — yea,  even  the 
breath  of  that  old  yEolus,  Scandal  !  Well,  then,  I  had  money — 
no  matter  how  I  came  by  it — and  health,  and  gaiety;  and  I  was 
well  received  in  the  coteries  that  exist  in  all  capitals,  but  mostly, 
in  France,  where  pleasure  is  the  cement  that  joins  many  discord- 
ant atoms :  here,  I  say,  I  met  Mary  and  her  daughter,  by  my  old 
friend, — the  daughter,  still  innocent,  but,  sacre .'  in  what  an  ele- 
ment of  vice  !  We  knew  each  other's  secrets,  Mary  and  I,  and 
kept  them  :  she  thought  me  a  greater  knave  than  I  was,  and  she 
intrusted  to  me  her  intention  of  selling  her  child  to  a  rich  Eng- 
lish marquis.  On  the  other  hand,  the  poor  girl  confided  to  me 
her  horror  of  the  scenes  she  witnessed  and  the  snares  that  sur- 
rounded her.  What  do  you  think  preserved  her  pure  from  all 
danger?  Bah  !  you  will  never  guess  !  It  was  partly  because,  if 
example  corrupts,  it  as  often  deters,  but  principally  because  she 
loved.  A  girl  who  loves  one  man  purely  has  about  her  an  amulet 
which  defies  the  advances  of  the  profligate.  There  was  a  hand- 
some young  Italian,  an  artist,  who  frequented  the  house — he  was 
the  man.  I  had  to  choose,  then,  between  mother  and  daughter: 
I  chose  the  last." 

Philip  seized  hold  of  Gawtrey's  hand,  grasped  it  warmly,  and 
the  good-for-nothing  continued : 

"  Do  you  know  that  I  loved  that  girl  as  well  as  I  had  ever  loved 
the  mother,  though  in  another  way;  she  was  what  I  had  fancied 
the  mother  to  be ;  still  more  fair,  more  graceful,  more  winning, 
with  a  heart  as  full  of  love  as  her  mother's  had  been  of  vanity.  I 
loved  that  child  as  if  she  had  been  my  own  daughter;  I  induced 
her  to  leave  her  mother's  house ;  I  secreted  her ;  I  saw  her 
married  to  the  man  she  loved ;  I  gave  her  away,  and  saw  no 
more  of  her  for  several  months." 

"Why?" 

"Because  I  spent  them  in  prison!  The  young  people  could 
not  live  upon  air;  I  gave  them  what  I  had,  and,  in  order  to  do 
more,  I  did  something  which  displeased  the  police;  I  narrowly 
escaped  that  time :  but  I  am  popular — very  popular — and  with 
plenty  of  witnesses,  not  over  scrupulous,  I  got  off !  When  I  was 
released  I  would  not  go  to  see  them,  for  my  clothes  were  ragged : 
the  police  still  watched  me,  and  I  would  not  do  them  harm  in  the 
world  !  Ay,  poor  wretches !  they  struggled  so  hard :  he  could 
get  very  little  by  his  art,  though,  I  believe,  he  was  a  cleverish 
fellow  at  it,  and  the  money  I  had  given  them  could  not  last  for- 
ever. They  lived  near  the  Champs  Elysees,  and  at  night  I  used 
to  steal  out  and  look  at  them  through  the  window.  They  seemed 
so  happy,  and  so  handsome,  and  so  good ;  but  he  looked  sickly, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  185 

and  I  saw  that,  like  all  Italians,  he  languished  for  his  own  warm 
climate.  But  man  is  born  to  act  as  well  as  to  contemplate,"  pur- 
sued Gawtrey,  changing  his  tone  into  the  allegro  ;  "  and  I  was 
soon  driven  into  my  old  ways,  though  in  a  lower  line.  I  went  to 
London,  just  to  give  my  reputation  an  airing,  and  when  I  returned, 
pretty  flush  again,  the  poor  Italian  was  dead,  and  Fanny  was  a 
widow,  with  one  boy,  and  enceinte  with  a  second  child.  So  then 
I  sought  her  again,  for  her  mother  had  found  her  out,  and  was  at 
her  with  her  devilish  kindness ;  but  Heaven  was  merciful,  and 
took  her  away  from  both  of  us :  she  died  in  giving  birth  to  a 
girl,  and  her  last  words  were  uttered  to  me,  imploring  me — the 
adventurer,  the  charlatan,  the  good-for-nothing  to  keep  her  child 
from  the  clutches  of  her  own  mother.  Well,  sir,  I  did  what  I 
could  for  both  the  children;  but  the  boy  was  consumptive,  like 
his  father,  and  sleeps  at  Pere-la-Chaise.  The  girl  is  here ;  you 
shall  see  her  some  day.  Poor  Fanny  !  if  ever  the  devil  will  let 
me,  I  shall  reform  for  her  sake ;  meanwhile,  for  her  sake  I  must 
get  grist  for  the  mill.  My  story  is  concluded,  for  I  need  not  tell 
you  all  of  my  pranks — of  all  the  parts  I  have  played  in  life.  I 
have  never  been  a  murderer,  or  a  burglar,  or  a  highway  robber, 
or  what  the  law  calls  a  thief.  I  can  only  say,  as  I  said  before,  I 
have  lived  upon  my  wits,  and  they  have  been  a  tolerable  capital  on 
the  whole.  I  have  been  an  actor,  a  money-lender,  a  physician,  a 
professor  of  animal  magnetism  (that  was  lucrative  till  it  went  out 
of  fashion,  perhaps  it  will  come  in  again  ;)  I  have  been  a  lawyer, 
a  house-agent,  a  dealer  in  curiosities  and  china ;  I  have  kept  a 
hotel ;  I  have  set  up  a  weekly  newspaper ;  I  have  seen  almost 
every  city  in  Europe,  and  made  acquaintance  with  some  of  its 
gaols ;  but  a  man  who  has  plenty  of  brains  generally  falls  on  his 
legs." 

"  And  your  father  ?  "  said  Philip ;  and  here  he  spoke  to  Gaw- 
trey of  the  conversation  he  had  overheard  in  the  churchyard,  but 
on  which  a  scruple  of  natural  delicacy  had  hitherto  kept  him 
silent. 

"Well,  now,"  said  his  host,  while  a  slight  blush  rose  to  his 
cheeks,  "  I  will  tell  you,  that  though  to  my  father's  sternness  and 
avarice  I  attribute  many  of  my  faults,  I  yet  always  had  a  sort  of 
love  for  him ;  and  when  in  London,  I  accidentally  heard  that  he 
was  growing  blind,  and  living  with  an  artful  old  jade  of  a  house- 
keeper, who  might  send  him  to  rest  with  a  dose  of  magnesia  the 
night  after  she  had  coaxed  him  to  make  a  will  in  her  favor.  I 
sought  him  out,  and — But  you  say  you  heard  what  passed." 

"  Yes ;  and  I  heard  him  also  call  you  by  name,  when  it  was 
too  late,  and  I  saw  the  tears  on  his  cheeks." 


1 86  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

"  Did  you?  will  you  swear  to  that?  "  exclaimed  Gawtrey,  with 
vehemence :  then  shading  his  brow  with  his  hand,  he  fell  into  a 
reverie  that  lasted  some  moments. 

"  If  anything  happen  to  me,  Philip,"  he  said,  abruptly,  "  per- 
haps he  may  yet  be  a  father  to  poor  Fanny ;  and  if  he  takes  to 
her,  she  will  repay  him  for  whatever  pain  I  may,  perhaps,  have 
cost  him.  Stop  !  now  I  think  of  it,  I  will  write  down  his  address 
for  you — never  forget  it — there  !  It  is  time  to  go  to  bed." 

Gawtrey's  tale  made  a  deep  impression  on  Philip.  He  was  too 
young,  too  inexperienced,  too  much  borne  away  by  the  passion  of 
the  narrator,  to  see  that  Gawtrey  had  less  cause  to  blame  Fate  than 
himself.  True,  he  had  been  unjustly  implicated  in  the  disgrace  of 
an  unworthy  uncle,  but  he  had  lived  with  that  uncle,  though  he 
knew  him  to  be  a  common  cheat ;  true,  he  had  been  betrayed  by 
a  friend,  but  he  had  before  known  that  friend  to  be  a  man  without 
principle  or  honor.  But  what  wonder  that  an  ardent  boy  saw 
nothing  of  this  ;  saw  only  the  good  heart  that  had  saved  a  poor 
girl  from  vice,  and  sighed  to  relieve  a  harsh  and  avaricious  parent. 
Even  the  hints  that  Gawtrey  unawares  let  fall  of  practices  scarcely 
covered  by  the  jovial  phrase  of  "  a  great  schoolboy's  scrapes," 
either  escaped  the  notice  of  Philip,  or  were  charitably  construed  by 
him,  in  the  compassion  and  the  ignorance  of  a  young,  hasty,  and 
grateful  heart. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

"  And  she's  a  stranger  ! 
Women — beware  women." — MlDDLETON. 

"  As  we  love  our  youngest  children  best, 
So  the  last  fruit  of  our  affection, 
Wherever  we  bestow  it,  is  most  strong; 
Since  'tis  indeed  our  latest  harvest-home, 
Last  merriment  'fore  winter  !  " — WEBSTER  :   Devil's  Law  Cast. 

"  I  would  fain  know  what  kind  of  thing  a  man's  heart  is  ? 
I  will  report  it  to  you :  'tis  a  thing  framed 
With  divers  corners !  " — :RowLEY. 

I  HAVE  said  that  Gawtrey's  tale  made  a  deep  impression  on 
Philip ;  that  impression  was  increased  by  subsequent  conversa- 
tions, more  frank  even  than  their  talk  had  hitherto  been.  There 
was  certainly  about  this  man  a  fatal  charm  which  concealed  his 
vices.  It  arose,  perhaps,  from  the  perfect  combinations  of  his 
physical  frame — from  a  health  which  made  his  spirits  buoyant 
and  hearty  under  all  circumstances,  and  a  blood  so  fresh,  so 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  187 

sanguine,  that  it  could  not  fail  to  keep  the  pores  of  the  heart 
open.  But  he  was  not  the  less — for  all  his  kindly  impulses  and 
generous  feelings,  and  despite  the  manner  in  which,  naturally 
anxious  to  make  the  least  unfavorable  portrait  of  himself  to  Philip, 
he  softened  and  glossed  over  the  practices  of  his  life — a  thorough 
and  complete  rogue,  a  dangerous,  desperate,  reckless  dare-devil ; 
it  was  easy  to  see  when  anything  crossed  him,  by  the  cloud  on 
his  shaggy  brow,  by  the  swelling  of  the  veins  on  the  forehead,  by 
the  dilation  of  the  broad  nostril,  that  he  was  one  to  cut  his  way 
through  every  obstacle  to  an  end, — choleric,  impetuous,  fierce, 
determined ;  such,  indeed,  were  the  qualities  that  made  him 
respected  among  his  associates,  as  his  more  bland  and  humorous 
ones  made  him  beloved :  he  was,  in  fact,  the  incarnation  of  that 
great  spirit  which  the  laws  of  the  world  raise  up  against  the  world, 
and  by  which  the  world's  injustice,  on  a  large  scale,  is  awfully 
chastised  ;  on  a  small  scale,  merely  nibbled  at  and  harassed,  as 
the  rat  that  gnaws  the  hoof  of  the  elephant — the  spirit  which,  on 
a  vast  theatre,  rises  up,  gigantic  and  sublime,  in  the  heroes  of 
war  and  revolution,  in  Mirabeaus,  Marats,  Napoleons ;  on  a  minor 
stage,  it  shows  itself  in  demagogues,  fanatical  philosophers,  and 
mob- writers ;  and  on  the  forbidden  boards,  before  whose  reeking 
lamps  outcasts  sit,  at  once  audience  and  actors,  it  never  produced 
a  knave  more  consummate  in  his  part,  or  carrying  it  off  with 
more  buskined  dignity,  than  William  Gawtrey.  I  call  him  by 
his  aboriginal  name ;  as  for  his  other  appellations,  Bacchus  him- 
self had  not  so  many  ! 

One  day,  a  lady,  richly  dressed,  was  ushered  by  Mr.  Birnie 
into  the  bureau  of  Mr.  Love,  alias  Gawtrey.  Philip  was  seated 
by  the  window,  reading,  for  the  first  time,  the  "Candide," — 
that  work,  next  to  "  Rasselas,"  the  most  hopeless  and  gloomy  of 
the  sports  of  genius  with  mankind.  The  lady  seemed  rather 
embarrassed  when  she  perceived  Mr.  Love  was  not  alone.  She 
drew  back,  and,  drawing  her  veil  still  more  closely  round  her, 
said,  in  French : 

"Pardon  me,  I  would  wish  a  private  conversation." 
Philip  rose  to  withdraw,  when  the  lady,  observing  him  with 
eyes  whose  lustre  shone  through  the  veil,  said  gently : 
"  But,  perhaps,  the  young  gentleman  is  discreet." 
"He  is  not  discreet,  he  is  discretion  !  my  adopted  son.     You 
may  confide  in  him,  upon  my  honor  you  may,  madam  !  "  and  Mr. 
Love  placed  his  hand  on  his  heart. 

"He  is  very  young,"  said  the  lady,  in  a  tone  of  involuntary 
compassion,  as,  with  a  very  white  hand,  she  unclasped  the  buckle 
of  her  cloak. 


1 88  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

"  He  can  the  better  understand  the  curse  of  celibacy,"  returned 
Mr.  Love,  smiling. 

The  lady  lifted  part  of  her  veil,  and  discovered  a  handsome 
mouth,  and  a  set  of  small,  white  teeth ;  for  she,  too,  smiled, 
though  gravely,  as  she  turned  to  Morton,  and  said : 

"You  seem,  sir,  more  fitted  to  be  a  votary  of  the  temple  than 
one  of  its  officers.  However,  Monsieur  Love,  let  there  be  no 
mistake  between  us ;  I  do  not  come  here  to  form  a  marriage  but 
to  prevent  one.  I  understand  that  Monsieur  the  Vicomte  de 
Vaudemont  has  called  into  request  your  services.  I  am  one  of 
the  Vicomte's  family ;  we  are  all  anxious  that  he  should  not  con- 
tract an  engagement  of  the  strange,  and,  pardon  me,  unbecoming 
character,  which  much  stamp  an  union  formed  at  a  public  office." 

"I  assure  you,  madam,"  said  Mr.  Love,  with  dignity,  "that 
we  have  contributed  to  the  very  first — " 

"  Mon  Dieu  !  "  interrupted  the  lady,  with  much  impatience, 
"  spare  me  an  eulogy  on  your  establishment :  I  have  no  doubt  it 
is  very  respectable;  and  ioigrtsettes  and  epiciers  may  do  extremely 
well.  But  the  Vicomte  is  a  man  of  birth  and  connections.  In  a 
word,  what  he  contemplates  is  preposterous.  I  know  not  what  fee 
Monsieur  Love  expects;  but  if  he  contrive  to  amuse  Monsieur  de 
Vaudemont,  and  to  frustrate  every  connection  he  proposes  to  form, 
that  fee,  whatever  it  may  be,  shall  be  doubled.  Do  you  under- 
stand me  !  " 

' '  Perfectly,  madam ;  yet  it  is  not  your  offer  that  will'bias  me, 
but  the  desire  to  oblige  so  charming  a  lady." 

"It  is  agreed,  then?"  said  the  lady,  carelessly;  and  as  she 
spoke,  she  again  glanced  at  Philip. 

"  If  maclame  will  call  again,  I  will  inform  her  of  my  plans," 
said  Mr.  Love. 

"  Yes,  I  will  call  again.  Good-morning  !  "  As  she  rose  and 
passed  Philip,  she  wholly  put  aside  her  veil,  and  looked  at  him 
with  a  gaze  entirely  free  from  coquetry,  but  curious,  searching, 
and  perhaps  admiring — the  look  that  an  artist  may  give  to  a  pict- 
ure that  seems  of  more  value  than  the  place  where  he  finds  it 
would  seem  to  indicate.  The  countenance  of  the  lady  herself 
was  fair  and  noble,  and  Philip  felt  a  strange  thrill  at  his  heart 
as,  with  a  slight  inclination  of  her  head,  she  turned  from  the 
room. 

"  Ah!  "  said  Gawtrey,  laughing,  "this  is  not  the  first  time  I 
have  been  paid  by  relations  to  break  off  the  marriages  I  had 
formed.  Egad  !  if  one  could  open  a  bureau  to  make  married 
people  single,  one  would  soon  be  a  Croesus  !  Well,  then,  this 
decides  me  to  complete  the  union  between  Monsieur  Goupille  and 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  189 

Mademoiselle    de    Courval.     I   had   balanced    a   little   hitherto 
between  the  epider  and  the  Vicomte.     Now  I  will  conclude  mat- 
ters.    Do  you  know,  Phil,  I  think  you  have  made  a  conquest?" 
"Pooh  !  "  said  Philip,  coloring. 

In  effect,  that  very  evening  Mr.  Love  saw  both  the  epider  and 
Adele,  and  fixed  the  marriage-day.  As  Monsieur  Goupille  was  a 
person  of  great  distinction  in  the  Faubourg,  the  wedding  was  one 
upon  which  Mr.  Love  congratulated  himself  greatly;  and  he 
cheerfully  accepted  an  invitation  for  himself  and  his  partners  to 
honor  the  noces  with  their  presence. 

A  night  or  two  before  the  day  fixed  for  the  marriage  of  Mon- 
sieur Goupille  and  the  aristocratic  Adele,  when  Mr.  Birnie  had 
retired,  Gawtrey  made  his  usual  preparations  for  enjoying  him- 
self. But  this  time  the  cigar  and  the  punch  seemed  to  fail  of  their 
effect.  Gawtrey  remained  moody  and  silent :  and  Morton  was 
thinking  of  the  bright  eyes  of  the  lady  who  was  so  much  inter- 
ested against  the  amours  of  the  Vicomte  de  Vaudemont. 

At  last  Gawtrey  broke  silence : 

"  My  young  friend,"  said  he,  "  I  told  you  of  my  \\it\eprofegee ; 
I  have  been  buying  toys  for  her  this  morning;  she  is  a  beautiful 
creature :  to-morrow  is  her  birthday — she  will  then  be  six  years 
old.  But — but — "  here  Gawtrey  sighed, — "I  fear  she  is  not  all 
right  here,"  and  he  touched  his  forehead. 

"I  should  like  much  to  see  her,"  said  Philip,  not  noticing  the 
latter  remark. 

"  And  you  shall — you  shall  come  with  me  to-morrow.  Heigho ! 
I  should  not  like  to  die,  for  her  sake !  " 

"  Does  her  wretched  relation  attempt  to  regain  her?  " 

"Her  relation!  No;  she  is  no  more;  she  died  about  two 
years  since  !  Poor  Mary  !  I — well,  this  is  folly.  But  Fanny  is 
at  present  in  a  convent ;  they  are  all  kind  to  her,  but  then  I  pay 
well;  if  I  were  dead,  and  the  pay  stopped, — again  I  ask,  what 
would  become  of  her,  unless,  as  I  before  said,  my  father — " 

"But  you  are  making  a  fortune  now?" 

"If  this  lasts — yes;  but  I  live  in  fear — the  police  of  this 
cursed  city  are  lynx-eyed  :  however,  that  is  the  bright  side  of  the 
question." 

"  Why  not  have  the  child  with  you,  since  you  love  her  so  much  ? 
She  would  be  a  great  comfort  to  you." 

"  Is  this  a  place  for  a  child — a  girl?  "  said  Gawtrey,  stamping 
his  foot  impatiently.  "  I  should  go  mad  if  I  saw  that  villainous 
deadman's  eye  bent  upon  her !  " 

"You  speak  of  Birnie.     How  can  you  endure  him  ?  ' 

"When  you  are  my  age  you  will  know  why  we  endure  what  we 


I  pO  NIGHT   AXD   MORNING. 

dread ;  why  we  make  friends  of  those  who  else  would  be  most 
horrible  foes:  no,  no,  nothing  can  deliver  me  of  this  man  but 
Death.  And — and — "  added  Gawtrey,  turning  pale,  "I  cannot 
murder  a  man  who  eats  my  bread.  There  are  stronger  ties,  my 
lad,  than  affection,  that  bind  men,  like  galley-slaves,  together. 
He  who  can  hang  you  puts  the  halter  round  your  neck  and  leads 
you  by  it  like  a  dog." 

A  shudder  came  over  the  young  listener.  And  what  dark 
secrets,  known  only  to  those  two,  had  bound,  to  a  man  seemingly 
his  subordinate  and  tool,  the  strong  will  and  resolute  temper  of 
William  Gawtrey? 

"But,  begone,  dull  care!  "  exclaimed  Gawtrey,  rousing  him- 
self. "And,  after  all,  Birnie  is  a  useful  fellow,  and  dare  no  more 
turn  against  me  than  I  against  him  !  Why  don't  you  drink  more  ? 

« Oh !  have  you  e'er  heard  of  the  famed  Captain  Wattle  ? ' " 

and  Gawtrey  broke  out  into  a  loud  Bacchanalian  hymn,  in  which 
Philip  could  find  no  mirth,  and  from  which  the  songster  suddenly 
paused  to  exclaim : 

"Mind  you  say  nothing  about  Fanny  to  Birnie;  my  secrets 
with  him  are  not  of  that  nature.  He  could  not  hurt  her,  poor 
lamb  !  it  is  true, — at  least,  as  far  as  I  can  foresee.  But  one  can 
never  feel  too  sure  of  one's  lamb,  if  one  once  introduces  it  to  the 
butcher!  " 

The  next  day  being  Sunday,  the  bureau  was  closed,  and 
Philip  and  Gawtrey  repaired  to  the  convent.  It  was  a  dismal- 
looking  place  as  to  the  exterior ;  but,  within,  there  was  a  large 
garden,  well  kept,  and,  notwithstanding  the  winter,  it  seemed 
fair  and  refreshing,  compared  with  the  polluted  streets.  The 
window  of  the  room  into  which  they  were  shown  looked  upon  the 
green  sward,  with  walls  covered  with  ivy  at  the  farther  end.  And 
Philip's  own  childhood  came  back  to  him  as  he  gazed  on  the 
quiet  of  the  lonely  place. 

The  door  opened  ;  an  infant  voice  was  heard,  a  voice  of  glee, 
of  rapture  ;  and  a  child,  light  and  beautiful  as  a  fairy,  bounded 
to  Gawtrey 's  breast. 

Nestling  there,  she  kissed  his  face,  his  hands,  his  clothes,  with 
a  passion  that  did  not  seem  to  belong  to  her  age,  laughing  and 
sobbing  almost  at  a  breath. 

On  his  part,  Gawtrey  appeared  equally  affected ;  he  stroked 
down  her  hair  with  his  huge  hand,  calling  her  all  manner  of  pet 
names,  in  a  tremulous  voice  that  vainly  struggled  to  be  gay. 

At  length  he  took  the  toys  he  had  brought  with  him  from  his 
capacious  pockets,  and  strewing  them  on  the  floor,  fairly  stretched 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  19! 

his  vast  bulk  along ;  while  the  child  tumbled  over  him,  sometimes 
grasping  at  the  toys,  and  then  again  returning  to  his  bosom,  and 
laying  her  head  there,  looked  up  quietly  into  his  eyes,  as  if  the 
joy  were  too  much  for  her. 

Morton,  unheeded  by  both,  stood  by  with  folded  arms.  He 
thought  of  his  lost  and  ungrateful  brother,  and  muttered  to  him- 
self: 

"  Fool !  when  she  is  older,  she  will  forsake  him  !  " 
Fanny  betrayed  in  her  face  the  Italian  origin  of  her  father. 
She  had  that  exceeding  richness  of  complexion  which,  though  not 
common  even  in  Italy,  is  only  to  be  found  in  the  daughters  of 
that  land,  and  which  harmonized  well  with  the  purple  lustre  of 
her  hair,  and  the  full,  clear  iris  of  the  dark  eyes.  Never  were 
parted  cherries  brighter  than  her  dewy  lips  ;  and  the  color  of  the 
open  neck  and  the  rounded  arms  was  of  a  whiteness  still  more 
dazzling,  from  the  darkness  of  the  hair  and  the  carnation  of  the 
glowing  cheek. 

Suddenly  Fanny  started  from  Gawtrey's  arms,  and  running  up 
to  Morton,  gazed  at  him  wistfully,  and  said,  in  French  : 

"  Who  are  you  ?  Do  you  come  from  the  moon?  I  think  you 
do."  Then  stopping  abruptly,  she  broke  into  a  verse  of  a  nursery- 
song,  v/hich  she  chaunted  with  a  low,  listless  tone,  as  if  she  were 
not  conscious  of  the  sense.  As  she  thus  sung,  Morton,  looking 
at  her,  felt  a  strange  and  painful  doubt  seize  him.  The  child's 
eyes,  though  soft,  were  so  vacant  in  their  gaze. 

"And  why  do  I  come  from  the  moon  ?  "  said  he. 

"Because  you  look  sad  and  cross.  I  don't  like  you — I  don't 
like  the  moon,  it  gives  me  a  pain  here  !  "  and  she  put  her  hand 
to  her  temples.  "  Have  you  got  anything  for  Fanny — poor,  poor, 
Fanny?"  and,  dwelling  on  the  epithet,  she  shook  her  head 
mournfully. 

"You  are  rich,  Fanny,  with  all  those  toys." 

' '  Am  I  ?  everybody  calls  me  poor  Fanny — everybody  but 
papa;  "  and  she  ran  again  to  Gawtrey,  and  laid  her  head  on  his 
shoulder. 

"  She  calls  me  papa  !  "  said  Gawtrey,  kissing  her ;  "  you  hear 
it?  Bless  her!" 

"And  you  never  kiss  anyone  but  Fanny — you  have  no  other 
little  girl?"  said  the  child,  earnestly,  and  with  a  look  less  vacant 
than  that  which  had  saddened  Morton. 

"  No  other — no,  nothing  under  heaven,  and  perhaps  above  it, 
but  you  !  "  and  he  clasped  her  in  his  arms.  "  But,"  he  added, 
after  a  pause — "  but  mind  me,  Fanny,  you  roust  like  this  gentle- 


192  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

man.  He  will  be  always  good  to  you :  and  he  had  a  little 
brother  whom  he  was  as  fond  of  as  I  am  of  you." 

"  No,  I  won't  like  him  ;  I  won't  like  anybody  but  you  and  my 
sister !  " 

"  Sister  !  Who  is  your  sister  ?  " 

The  child's  face  relapsed  into  an  expression  almost  of  idiotcy. 
"  I  don't  know;  I  never  saw  her.  I  hear  her  sometimes,  but  I 
don't  understand  what  she  says.  Hush  !  Come  here  !  "  and 
she  stole  to  the  window  on  tiptoe.  Gawtrey  followed  and  looked 
out. 

"  Do  you  hear  her,  now  ?  "  said  Fanny.   "  What  does  she  say  ?  " 

As  the  girl  spoke,  some  bird  among  the  evergreens  uttered  a 
shrill,  plaintive  cry,  rather  than  song, —  a  sound  which  the 
thrush  occasionally  makes  in  the  winter,  and  which  seems  to 
express  something  of  fear,  and  pain,  and  impatience. 

"  What  does  she  say  ?     Can  you  tell  me  ?  "  asked  the  child. 

"  Pooh  !  that  is  a  bird  ;  why  do  you  call  it  your  sister  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know  !  Because  it  is — because  it — because — I  don't 
know — is  it  not  in  pain  ?  Do  something  for  it,  papa  !  " 

Gawtrey  glanced  at  Morton,  whose  face  betokened  his  deep 
pity,  and  creeping  up  to  him,  whispered  : 

' '  Do  you  think  she  is  really  touched  here  ?  No,  no,  she  will 
outgrow  it ;  I  am  sure  she  will !  " 

Morton  sighed. 

Fanny  by  this  time  had  again  seated  herself  in  the  middle  of 
the  floor,  and  arranged  her  toys,  but  without  seeming  to  take 
pleasure  in  them. 

At  last  Gawtrey  was  obliged  to  depart.  The  lay  sister,  who 
had  charge  of  Fanny,  was  summoned  into  the  parlor,  and  then 
the  child's  manner  entirely  changed ;  her  face  grew  purple — she 
sobbed  with  as  much  anger  as  grief:  "  She  would  not  leave  papa ; 
she  would  not  go — that  she  would  not !  " 

"It  is  always  so,"  whispered  Gawtrey  to  Morton,  in  an  abashed 
and  apologetic  voice.  "It  is  so  difficult  to  get  away  from  her. 
Just  go  and  talk  with  her  while  I  steal  out." 

Morton  went  to  her,  as  she  struggled  with  the  patient,  good- 
natured  sister,  and  began  to  soothe  and  caress  her,  till  she  turned 
on  him  her  large  humid  eyes,  and  said,  mournfully  : 

"  Tu  es  mechant,  tu.     Poor  Fanny  !  " 

"  But  this  pretty  doll — "  began  the  sister. 

The  child  looked  at  it  joylessly. 

"  And  papa  is  going  to  die  !  " 

"  Whenever  Monsieur  goes,"  whispered  the  nun,  "  she  always 
says  that  he  is  dead,  and  cries  herself  quietly  to  sleep ;  when 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  1 93 

Monsieur  returns,  she  says  he  is  come  to  life  again.  Some  one,  I 
suppose,  once  talked  to  her  about  death  ;  and  she  thinks  when 
she  loses  s-ight  of  any  one,  that  that  is  death." 

"  Poor  child  !  "  said  Morton,  with  a  trembling  voice. 

The  child  looked  up,  smiled,  stroked  his  cheek  with  her  little 
hand,  and  said  : 

"  Thank  you  !  Yes  ! — poor  Fanny  !  Ah,  he  is  going — see ! 
Let  me  go  too — tu  es  mechant." 

''But,"  said  Morton,  detaining  her  gently,  "do  you  know 
that  you  give  him  pain  ?  You  make  him  cry  by  showing  pain 
yourself.  Don't  make  him  so  sad  !  " 

The  child  seemed  struck,  hung  down  her  head  for  a  moment, 
as  if  in  thought,  and  then,  jumping  from  Morton's  lap,  ran  to 
Gawtrey,  put  up  her  pouting  lips,  and  said  : 

"  One  kiss  more  !  " 

Gawtrey  kissed  her,  and  turned  away  his  head. 

"  Fanny  is  a  good  girl;  "  and  Fanny,  as  she  spoke,  went  back 
to  Morton,  and  put  her  little  fingers  into  her  eyes,  as  if  either  to 
shut  out  Gawtrey's  retreat  from  her  sight,  or  to  press  back  her 
tears. 

"Give  me  the  doll  now,  Sister  Marie." 

Morton  smiled  and  sighed,  placed  the  child,  who  struggled  no 
more,  in  the  nun's  arms,  and  left  the  room;  but  as  he  closed  the 
door,  he  looked  back,  and  saw  that  Fanny  had  escaped  from  the 
sister,  thrown  herself  on  the  floor,  and  was  crying,  but  not  loud. 

"  Is  she  not  a  little  darling  ?  "  said  Gawtrey,  as  they  gained  the 
street. 

"  She  is,  indeed,  a  most  beautiful  child  !  " 

"And  you  will  love  her  if  I  leave  her  penniless,"  said  Gawtrey 
abruptly.  ' '  It  was  your  love  for  your  mother  and  your  brother 
that  made  me  like  you  from  the  first.  Ay,"  continued  Gawtrey, 
in  a  tone  of  great  earnestness,  "  ay,  and  whatever  may  happen  to 
me,  I  will  strive  and  keep  you,  my  poor  lad,  harmless;  and  what 
is  better,  innocent  even  of  such  matters  as  sit  light  enough  on  my 
own  well-seasoned  conscience.  In  turn,  if  ever  you  have  the 
power,  be  good  to  her;  yes,  be  good  to  her  !  and  I  won't  say  a 
harsh  word  to  you  if  ever  you  like  to  turn  king's  evidence  against 
myself." 

"  Gawtrey!  "  said  Morton,  reproachfully,  and  almost  fiercely. 

"Bah!  Such  things  are  !  But  tell  me  honestly,  do  you  think 
she  is  very  strange — very  deficient?  " 

"  I  have  not  seen  enough  of  her  to  judge,"  answered  Morton, 
evasively. 

"She  is  so  changeful,"  persisted  Gawtrey;   "sometimes  you 


194  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

would  say  that  she  was  above  her  age,  she  comes  out  with  such 
thoughtful,  clever  things ;  then,  the  next  moment,  she  throws  me 
into  despair.  These  nuns  are  very  skillful  in  education ;  at  least, 
they  are  said  to  be  so.  The  doctors  give  me  hope,  too ;  you  see 
her  poor  mother  was  very  unhappy  at  the  time  of  her  birth, — 
delirious,  indeed, — that  may  account  for  it.  I  often  fancy  that  it 
is  the.constant  excitement  which  her  state  occasions  me,  that  makes 
me  love  her  so  much ;  you  see  she  is  one  who  can  never  shift  for 
herself.  I  must  get  money  for  her  ;  I  have  left  a  little  already 
with  the  superior,  and  I  would  not  touch  it  to  save  myself  from 
famine  !  If  she  has  money,  people  will  be  kind  enough  to 
her.  And  then,"  continued  Gawtrey,  "you  must  perceive  that 
she  loves  nothing  in  the  world  but  me — me,  whom  nobody  else 
loves!  Well — well,  now  to  the  shop  again  !  " 

On  returning  home,  the  bonne  informed  them  that  a  lady  had 
called,  and  asked  both  for  Monsieur  Love  and  the  young  gentle- 
man, and  seemed  much  chagrined  at  missing  both.  By  the 
description,  Morton  guessed  she  was  the  fair  incognita,  and  felt 
disappointed  at  having  lost  the  interview. 

CHAPTER  V. 

"  The  cursed  carle  was  at  his  wonted  trade, 

Still  tempting  heedless  men  into  his  snare, 

In  witching  wise,  as  I  before  have  said ; 

But  when  he  saw,  in  goodly  gear  array'd, 

The  grave  majestic  knight  approaching  nigh, 

His  countenance  fell." — THOMSON  :   Castle  of  Indolence. 

THE  morning  rose  that  was  to  unite  Monsieur  Goupille  with 
Mademoiselle  Adele  de  Courval.  The  ceremony  was  performed, 
and  bride  and  bridegroom  went  through  that  trying  ordeal  with 
becoming  gravity.  Only  the  elegant  Adele  seemed  more  unaf- 
fectedly agitated  than  Mr.  Love  could  well  account  for ;  she  was 
very  nervous  in  church,  and  more  often  turned  her  eyes  to  the 
door  than  to  the  altar.  Perhaps  she  wanted  to  run  away ;  but  it 
was  either  too  late  or  too  early  for  that  proceeding.  The  rite  per- 
formed, the  happy  pair  and  their  friends  adjourned  to  the  Cadran 
JSleu,  that  restaurant  so  celebrated  in  the  festivities  of  the  good 
citizens  of  Paris.  Here  Mr.  Love  had  ordered,  at  the  epioier's 
expense,  a  most  tasteful  entertainment. 

"  Sacre  !  but  you  have  not  played  the  economist,  Monsieur 
Lofe,"  said  Monsieur  Goupille,  rather  querulously,  as  he  glanced 
at  the  long  room  adorned  with  artificial  flowers,  and  the  table  d 
Cinquante  convert* 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  195 

"Bah,"  replied  Mr.  Love,  -'you  can  retrench  afterwards. 
Think  of  the  fortune  she  brought  you." 

"It  is  a  pretty  sum,  certainly,"  said  Monsieur  Goupille,  "  and 
the  notary  is  perfectly  satisfied." 

"  There  is  not  a  marriage  in  Paris  that  does  me  more  credit," 
said  Mr.  Love ;  and  he  marched  off  to  receive  the  compliments 
and  congratulations  that  awaited  him  among  such  of  the  guests  as 
were  aware  of  his  good  offices.  The  Vicomte  de  Vaudemont  was 
of  course  not  present.  He  had  not  been  near  Mr.  Love  since 
Adele  had  accepted  the  epicier.  But  Madame  Beavor,  in  a  white 
bonnet  lined  with  lilac,  was  hanging,  sentimentally,  on  the  arm 
of  the  Pole,  who  looked  very  grand  with  his  white  favor ;  and 
Mr.  Higgins  had  been  introduced,  by  Mr.  Love,  to  a  little  dark 
Creole,  who  wore  paste  diamonds,  and  had  very  languishing  eyes; 
so  that  Mr.  Love's  eyes  might  well  swell  with  satisfaction  at  the 
prospect  of  the  various  blisses  to  come,  which  might  owe  their 
origin  to  his  benevolence.  In  fact,  that  archpriest  of  the  Tem- 
ple of  Hymen  was  never  more  great  than  he  was  that  day ;  never 
did  his  establishment  seem  more  solid,  his  reputation  more  popu- 
lar, or  his  fortune  more  sure.  He  was  the  life  of  the  party. 

The  banquet  over,  the  revellers  prepared  for  a  dance.  Monsieur 
Goupille,  in  tights,  still  tighter  than  he  usually  wore,  and  of  a 
rich  nankeen,  quite  new,  with  striped  silk  stockings,  opened  the 
ball  with  the  lady  of  a  rich  pdtissier  in  the  same  Faubourg ;  Mr. 
Love  took  out  the  bride.  The  evening  advanced ;  and  after  sev- 
eral other  dances  of  ceremony,  Monsieur  Goupille  conceived  him- 
self entitled  to  dedicate  one  to  connubial  affection.  A  country- 
dance  was  called,  and  the  epicier  claimed  the  fair  hand  of  the 
gentle  Adele.  About  this  time,  two  persons,  not  hitherto  per- 
ceived, had  quietly  entered  the  room,  and,  standing  near  the 
doorway,  seemed  examining  the  dancers,  as  if  in  search  of  some 
one.  They  bobbed  their  heads  up  and  down,  to  and  fro — now- 
stopped — now  stood  on  tiptoe.  The  one  was  a  tall,  large-whis- 
kered, fair-haired  man ;  the  other,  a  little,  thin,  neatly  dressed 
person,  who  kept  his  hand  on  the  arm  of  his  companion,  and 
whispered  to  him  from  time  to  time.  The  whiskered  gentleman 
replied  in  a  guttural  tone,  which  proclaimed  his  origin  to  be  Ger- 
man. The  busy  dancers  did  not  perceive  the  strangers.  The 
bystanders  did,  and  a  hum  of  curiosity  circled  round,  who  could 
they  be  ?  Who  had  invited  them  ?  They  were  new  faces  in  the 
Faubourg — perhaps  relations  to  Adele. 

In  high  delight  the  fair  bride  was  skipping  down  the  middle, 
while  Monsieur  Goupille,  wiping  his  forehead  with  care,  admired 
h.er  agility  -f  when,  Jo  and  behold  !  the  whiskered  gentleman  I 


196  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

have  described,  abruptly  advanced  from  his  companion,  and 
cried : 

' '  La  voila  .'  sacre  tonnerre  / ' ' 

At  that  voice,  at  that  apparition,  the  bride  halted  ;  so  suddenly 
indeed,  that  she  had  not  time  to  put  down  both  feet,  but  remained 
with  one  high  in  the  air,  while  the  other  sustained  itself  on  the 
light  fantastic  toe.  The  company  naturally  imagined  this  to  be 
an  operatic  flourish,  which  called  for  approbation.  Monsieur 
Love,  who  was  thundering  down  behind  her,  cried  "Bravo!" 
and  as  the  well-grown  gentleman  had  to  make  a  sweep  to  avoid 
disturbing  her  equilibrium,  he  came  full  against  the  whiskered 
stranger,  and  sent  him  off  as  a  bat  sends  a  ball. 

"  Man  Dieu  !  "  cried  Monsieur  Goupille.  "  Ma  douce  amie 
— she  has  fainted  away  !"  And,  indeed,  Adele  had  no  sooner 
recovered  her  balance,  than  she  resigned  it  once  more  into  the 
arms  of  the  startled  Pole,  who  was  happily  at  hand. 

In  the  mean  time,  the  German  stranger,  who  had  saved  him- 
self from  falling  by  coming  with  his  full  force  upon  the  toes  of 
Mr.  Higgins,  again  advanced  to  the  spot,  and,  rudely  seizing  the 
fair  bride  by  the  arm,  exclaimed  : 

"No  sham  if  you  please,  madame — speak!  What  the  devil 
have  you  done  with  the  money  ?  ' ' 

"  Really,  sir,"  said  Monsieur  Goupille,  drawing  up  his  cravat, 
' '  this  is  very  extraordinary  conduct !  What  have  you  got  to  say 
to  this  lady's  money?  It  is  my  money  now,  sir  !  " 

"Oho!  it  is,  is  it?  We'll  soon  see  that.  Approchez  done, 
Monsieur  Favart,  faites  votre  devoir."* 

At  these  words  the  small  companion  of  the  stranger  slowly 
sauntered  to  the  spot,  while  at  the  sound  of  his  name  and  the 
tread  of  his  step,  the  throng  gave  way  to  the  right  and  left.  For 
Monsieur  Favart  was  one  of  the  most  renowned  chiefs  of  the  great 
Parisian  police — a  man  worthy  to  be  the  contemporary  of  the 
illustrious  Vidocq. 

"  Calmez  vous,  messieurs;  do  not  be  alarmed,  ladies,"  said 
this  gentleman,  in  the  mildest  of  all  human  voices ;  and  certainly 
no  oil  dropped  on  the  waters  ever  produced  so  tranquillizing  an 
effect  as  that  small,  feeble,  gentle  tenor.  The  Pole  in  especial, 
who  was  holding  the  fair  bride  with  both  his  arms,  shook  all 
over,  and  seemed  about  to  let  his  burden  gradually  slide  to  the 
floor,  when  Monsieur  Favart,  looking  at  him  with  a  benevolent 
smile,  said  : 

*  Approach,  then,  Monsieur  Favart,  and  do  your  duty. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  197 

"Aha,  mon  brave!  c'est  toi.  Res  fez  done.  Res  fez,  tenant 
toujours  la  dame  /  "* 

The  Pole,  thus  condemned,  in  the  French  idiom,  "always  to 
hold  the  dame,"  mechanically  raised  the  arms  he  had  previously 
dejected,  and  the  police  officer,  with  an  approving  nod  of  the 
head,  said : 

' '  .Bon  !  ne  bougez  point,  c1  est  ca  !  "f 

Monsieur  Goupille,  in  equal  surprise  and  indignation  to  see  his 
better  half  thus  consigned,  without  any  care  to  his  own  martial 
feelings,  to  the  arms  of  another,  was  about  to  snatch  her  from 
the  Pole,  when  Monsieur  Favart,  touching  him  on  the  breast  with 
his  little  finger,  said,  in  the  suavest  manner : 

"Mon  bourgeois,  meddle  not  with  what  does  not  concern 
you !  " 

"With  what  does  not  concern  me /"  repeated  Monsieur  Gou- 
pille, drawing  himself  up  to  so  great  a  stretch  that  he  seemed 
pulling  off  his  tights  the  wrong  way.  "Explain  yourself,  if  you 
please  !  This  lady  is  my  wife  !  " 

"Say  that  again, — that's  all !  "  cried  the  whiskered  stranger, 
in  a  most  horrible  French,  and  with  a  furious  grimace,  as  he 
shook  both  his  fists  just  under  the  nose  of  the  epicier. 

"Say  it  again,  sir,"  said  Monsieur  Goupille,  by  no  means 
daunted;  "and  why  should  not  I  say  it  again?  That  lady  is 
my  wife  !  " 

"You  lie!  she  is  mine!"  cried  the  German;  and  bending 
down,  he  caught  the  fair  Adele  from  the  Pole  with  as  little  cere- 
mony as  if  she  had  never  had  a  great-grandfather  a  marquis,  and 
giving  her  a  shake  that  might  have  roused  the  dead,  thundered 
out: 

"Speak  !  Madame  Bihl !     Are  you  my  wife  or  not?  " 

• '  Monstre  ! ' '  murmured  Adele,  opening  her  eyes. 

"  There — you  hear — she  owns  me  !  "  said  the  German,  appeal- 
ing to  the  company  with  a  triumphant  air. 

"  C'est  vraif"  said  the  soft  voice  of  the  policeman.  "And 
now,  pray  don't  let  us  disturb  your  amusements  any  longer.  We 
have  a  fiacre  at  the  door.  Remove  your  lady,  Monsieur  Bihl." 

"  Monsieur  Lofe  !  Monsieur  Lofe  !  "  cried,  or  rather  screeched, 
the  epicier,  darting  across  the  room,  and  seizing  the  chef\>y  the 
tail  of  his  coat,  just  as  he  was  half  way  through  the  door,  "  Come 
back  !  Quelle  mauvaise  plaisanterie  me  faites-vous  id  ?\  Did 

*  Aha,  my  fine  fellow  !  it's  you.    Stay  then.     Stay,  always  holding  the  dame. 

f  Good!  don't  stir— that's  it. 

\  What  scurvy  trick  is  this  you're  playing  me? 


198  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

you  not  tell  me  that  lady  was  single  ?  Am  I  married  or  not  ? 
Do  I  stand  on  my  head  or  my  heels?  " 

"Hush!  hush!  man  bon  bourgeois  /"  whispered  Mr.  Love, 
"all  shall  be  explained  to-morrow  !  " 

"  Who  is  this  gentleman?  "  asked  Monsieur  Favart,  approach- 
ing Mr.  Love,  who  seeing  himself  in  for  it,  suddenly  jerked  off 
the  epicier,  thrust  his  hands  down  into  his  •  breeches  pockets, 
buried  his  chin  in  his  cravat,  elevated  his  eyebrows,  screwed  in 
his  eyes,  and  puffed  out  his  cheeks,  so  that  the  astonished  Mon- 
sieur Goupille  really  thought  himself  bewitched,  and  literally  did 
not  recognize  the  face  of  the  match-maker. 

"  Who  is  this  gentleman  ?  "  repeated  the  little  officer,  standing 
beside,  or  rather  below,  Mr.  Love,  and  looking  so  diminutive  by 
the  contrast,  that  you  might  have  fancied  that  the  Priest  of 
Hymen  had  only  to  breathe  to  blow  him  away. 

"  Who  should  he  be,  monsieur?"  cried,  with  great  pertness, 
Madame  Rosalie  Caumartin,  coming  to  the  relief,  with  the  gen- 
erosity of  her  sex.  "This  is  Monsieur  Lofe — Anglais  celebre. 
What  have  you  to  say  against  him?" 

"  He  has  got  five  hundred  francs  of  mine  !  "  cried  the  epicier. 

The  policeman  scanned  Mr.  Love,  with  great  attention.  "So 
you  are  in  Paris  again  ?  Jfein ! — vous  jouez  toujours  votre 
role  /  "  * 

"Ma  foi /"  said  Mr.  Love,  boldly;  "I  don't  understand 
what  monsieur  means ;  my  character  is  well  known  ;  go  and 
inquire  it  in  London  ;  ask  the  Secretary  of  Foreign  Affairs  what 
is  said  of  me  ;  inquire  of  my  Ambassador ;  demand  of  my — ' ' 

' '  Votre  Passeport,  monsieur  ? ' ' 

"It  is  at  home.  A  gentleman  does  not  carry  his  passport  in 
his  pocket  when  he  goes  to  a  ball !  " 

"  I  will  call  and  see  it — au  revoir  !  Take  my  advice  and  leave 
Paris ;  I  think  I  have  seen  you  somewhere  !  " 

"Yet  I  have  never  had  the  honor  to  marry  monsieur !"  said 
Mr.  Love,  with  a  polite  bow. 

In  return  for  his  joke  the  policeman  gave  Mr.  Love  one  look — 
it  was  a  quiet  look,  very  quiet ;  but  Mr.  Love  seemed  uncom- 
monly affected  by  it ;  he  did  not  say  another  word,  but  found 
himself  outside  the  house  in  a  twinkling.  Monsieur  Favart 
turned  round  and  saw  the  Pole  making  himself  as  small  as  possi- 
ble behind  the  goodly  proportions  of  Madame  Beavor. 

' '  What  name  does  that  gentleman  go  by  ?  " 

"  So-vo-lofski,  the  heroic  Pole,"  cried  Madame  Beavor,  with 

*  Veu'r?  always  acting  yoqr  part- 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  199 

Sundry  misgivings  at  the  unexpected  cowardice  of  so  great  a 
patriot. 

"  Hein !  take  care  of  yourselves,  ladies.  I  have  nothing 
against  that  person  this  time.  But  Monsieur  Latour  has  served 
his  apprenticeship  at  the  galleys,  and  is  no  more  a  Pole  than  I  am 
a  Jew." 

"And  this  lady's  fortune  !  "  cried  Monsieur  Goupille,  pathet- 
ically; "the  settlements  are  all  made — the  notaries  all  paid.  I 
am  sure  there  must  be  some  mistake." 

Monsieur  Bihl,  who  had  by  this  time  restored  his  lost  Helen  to 
her  senses,  stalked  up  to  the  epicier,  dragging  the  lady  along  with 
him. 

"  Sir,  there  is  no  mistake  !  But,  when  I  have  got  the  money, 
if  you  like  to  have  the  lady  you  are  welcome  to  her." 

"  Afonstre!"  again  muttered  the  fair  Adele. 

"The  long  and  the  short  of  it,"  said  Monsieur  Favart,  "is, 
that  Monsieur  Bihl  is  a  brave  garfon,  and  has  been  half  over  the 
world  as  a  courier." 

"A  courier  !  "  exclaimed  several  voices. 

"  Madame  was  nursery-governess  to  an  English  milord.  They 
married,  and  quarrelled — no  harm  in  that,  mes  amis ;  nothing 
more  common.  Monsieur  Bihl  is  a  very  faithful  fellow ;  nursed 
his  last  master  in  an  illness  that  ended  fatally,  because  he  travelled 
with  his  doctor.  Milord  left  him  a  handsome  legacy,  he  retired 
from  service,  and  fell  ill  perhaps  from  idleness  or  beer.  Is  not 
that  the  story,  Monsieur  Bihl?" 

"  He  was  always  drunk — the  wretch  !  "  sobbed  Adele. 

"  That  was  to  drown  my  domestic  sorrows,"  said  the  German  ; 
"  and  when  I  was  sick  in  my  bed,  madame  ran  off  with  my 
money.  Thanks  to  monsieur,  I  have  found  both,  and  I  wish  you 
a  very  good  night." 

"  Dansez  vous  toujours,  mes  amis,'1  said  the  officer,  bowing. 
And  following  Adele  and  her  spouse,  the  little  man  left  the  room 
— where  he  had  caused,  in  chests  so  broad  and  limbs  so  doughty, 
much  the  same  consternation  as  that  which  some  diminutive  fer- 
ret occasions  in  a  burrow  of  rabbits  twice  his  size. 

Morton  had  outstayed  Mr.  Love.  But  he  thought  it  unneces- 
sary to  linger  longer  after  that  gentleman's  departure ;  and,  in 
the  general  hubbub  that  ensued,  he  crept  out  unperceived,  and 
soon  arrived  at  the  bureau.  He  found  Mr.  Love  and  Mr.  Birnie 
already  engaged  in  packing  up  their  effects.  "  Why — when  did 
you  leave?"  said  Morton  to  Mr.  Birnie. 

"I  saw  the  policeman  enter." 

"And  why  the  deuce  did  not  you  tell  us?"  said  Gawtrey. 


200  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"Every  man  for  himself.  Besides,  Mr.  Love  was  dancing," 
replied  Mr.  Birnie,  with  a  dull  glance  of  disdain. 

"Philosophy!"  muttered  Gawtrey,  thrusting  his  dress-coat 
into  his  trunk  ;  then  suddenly  changing  his  voice,  "  Ha  !  ha  !  it 
was  a  very  good  joke  after  all — own  I  did  it  well.  Ecod  !  if  he 
had  not  given  me  that  look,  I  think  I  should  have  turned  the 
tables  on  him.  But  those  d — d  fellows  learn  of  the  mad  doctors 
how  to  tame  us.  Faith,  my  heart  went  down  to  my  shoes,  yet 
I'm  no  coward  !  " 

"  But,  after  all,  he  evidently  did  not  know  you,"  said  Morton  ; 
' '  and  what  has  he  to  say  against  you.  Your  trade  is  a  strange 
one,  but  not  dishonest.  Why  give  up  as  if — " 

"My  young  friend,"  interrupted  Gawtrey,  "whether  the 
officer  comes  after  us  or  not,  our  trade  is  ruined :  that  infernal 
Adele,  with  her  fabulous  grandmaman,  has  done  for  us.  Goupille 
will  blow  the  temple  about  our  ears.  No  help  for  it — eh, 
Birnie?" 

"None." 

"  Go  to  bed,  Philip  :  we'll  call  thee  at  daybreak,  for  we  must 
make  clear  work  before  our  neighbors  open  their  shutters." 

Reclined,  but  half  undressed,  on  his  bed  in  the  little  cabinet, 
Morton  revolved  the  events  of  the  evening.  The  thought  that  he 
should  see  no  more  of  that  white  hand  and  that  lovely  mouth, 
which  still  haunted  his  recollection  as  appertaining  to  the  incog- 
nita, greatly  indisposed  him  towards  the  abrupt  flight  intended 
by  Gawtrey,  while  (so  much  had  his  faith  in  that  person  depended 
upon  respect  for  his  confident  daring,  and  so  thoroughly  fearless 
was  Morton's  own  nature)  he  felt  himself  greatly  shaken  in  his 
allegiance  to  the  chief,  by  recollecting  the  effect  produced  on  his 
valor  by  a  single  glance  from  the  instrument  of  law.  He  had  not 
yet  lived  long  enough  to  be  aware  that  men  are  sometimes  the 
Representatives  of  Things ,  that  what  the  scytale  was  to  the  Spar- 
tan hero,  a  sheriff's  writ  often  is  to  a  Waterloo  medallist ;  that  a 
Bow  Street  runner  will  enter  the  foulest  den  where  Murder  sits  with 
his  fellows,  and  pick  out  his  prey  with  the  beck  of  his  forefinger. 
That,  in  short,  the  thing  called  LAW,  once  made  tangible  and 
present,  rarely  fails  to  palsy  the  fierce  heart  of  the  thing  called 
CRIME.  For  Law  is  the  symbol  of  all  mankind  reared  against 
One  Foe — the  Man  of  Crime.  Not  yet  aware  of  this  truth,  nor, 
indeed,  in  the  least  suspecting  Gawtrey  of  worse  offences  than 
those  of  a  charlatanic  and  equivocal  profession,  the  young  man 
mused  over  his  protector's  cowardice  in  disdain  and  wonder ;  till, 
wearied  with  conjectures,  distrust,  and  shame  at  his  own  strange 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  2O1 

position  of  obligation  to  one  whom  he  could  not  respect,  he  fell 
asleep. 

When  he  woke  he  saw  the  gray  light  of  dawn  that  streamed 
cheerlessly  through  his  shutterless  window,  struggling  with  the 
faint  ray  of  a  candle  that  Gawtrey,  shading  with  his  hand,  held 
over  the  sleeper.  He  started  up,  and,  in  the  confusion  of  waking 
and  the  imperfect  light  by  which  he  beheld  the  strong  features  of 
Gawtrey,  half  imagined  it  was  a  foe  who  stood  before  him. 

"  Take  care,  man  !  "  said  Gawtrey,  as  Morton,  in  this  belief, 
grasped  his  arm.  "  You  have  a  precious  rough  gripe  of  your  own. 
Be  quiet,  will  you  ?  I  have  a  word  to  say  to  you."  Here  Gaw- 
trey, placing  the  candle  on  a  chair,  returned  to  the  door  and 
closed  it. 

"  Look  you,"  he  said  in  a  whisper,  "  I  have  nearly  run  through 
my  circle  of  invention,  and  my  wit,  fertile  as  it  is,  can  present 
to  me  little  encouragement  in  the  future.  The  eyes  of  this  Fav- 
art  once  on  me,  every  disguise  and  every  double  will  not  long 
avail.  I  dare  not  return  to  London ;  I  am  too  well  known  in 
Brussels,  Berlin,  and  Vienna — " 

"  But,"  interrupted  Morton,  raising  himself  on  his  arm,  and 
fixing  his  dark  eyes  upon  his  host, — "  but  you  have  told  me  again 
and  again  that  you  have  committed  no  crime,  why  then  be  so 
fearful  of  discovery  ?  " 

"  Why,"  repeated  Gawtrey,  with  a  slight  hesitation  which  he 
instantly  overcame,  < '  why  !  have  not  you  yourself  learned  that 
appearances  have  the  effect  of  crimes?  Were  you  not  chased  as 
a  thief  when  I  rescued  you  from  your  foe  the  law  ?  Are  you  not, 
though  a  boy  in  years,  under  an  alias,  and  an  exile  from  your  own 
land  ?  And  how  can  you  put  these  austere  questions  to  me,  who 
am  growing  gray  in  the  endeavor  to  extract  sunbeams  from  cucum- 
bers— subsistence  from  poverty  ?  I  repeat  that  there  are  reasons 
why  I  must  avoid,  for  the  present,  the  great  capitals.  I  must  sink 
in  life,  and  take  to  the  provinces.  Birnie  is  sanguine  as  ever  :  but 
he  is  a  terrible  sort  of  comforter.  Enough  of  that.  Now  to  your- 
self: our  savings  are  less  than  you  might  expect ;  to  be  sure, 
Birnie  has  been  treasurer,  and  I  have  laid  by  a  little  for  Fanny, 
which  I  will  rather  starve  than  touch.  There  remain,  however, 
150  napoleons,  and  our  effects,  sold  at  a  fourth  their  value,  will 
fetch  150  more.  Here  is  your  share.  I  have  compassion  on  you. 
I  told  you  I  would  bear  you  harmless  and  innocent.  Leave  us, 
while  yet  time." 

It  seemed,  then,  to  Morton  that  Gawtrey  had  divined  his  thoughts 
of  shame  and  escape  of  the  previous  night ;  perhaps  Gawtrey  had  : 
and  such  is  the  human  heart,  that,  instead  of  welcoming  the  very 


202  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

release  he  had  half  contemplated,  now  that  it  was  offered  him, 
Philip  shrunk  from  it  as  a  base  desertion. 

"Poor  Gawtrey  !  "  said  he,  pushing  back  the  canvas  bag  of 
gold  held  out  to  him,  "  you  shall  not  go  over  the  world,  and  feel 
that  the  orphan  you  fed  and  fostered  left  you  to  starve  with  your 
money  in  his  pocket.  When  you  again  assure  me  that  you  have 
committed  no  crime,  you  again  remind  me  that  gratitude  has  no 
right  to  be  severe  upon  the  shifts  and  errors  of  its  benefactor.  If 
you  do  not  conform  to  society,  what  has  society  done  for  me  ? 
No !  I  will  not  forsake  you  in  a  reverse.  Fortune  has  given  you 
a  fall.  What,  then,  courage;  and  at  her  again  !  " 

These  last  words  were  said  so  heartily  and  cheerfully  as  Morton 
sprung  from  the  bed,  that  they  inspired  Gawtrey,  who  had  really 
desponded  of  his  lot. 

"  Well,"  said  he,  "  I  cannot  reject  the  only  friend  leftme;  and 
while  I  live — But  I  will  make  no  professions.  Quick,  then,  our 
luggage  is  already  gone,  and  I  hear  Birnie  grunting  the  rogue's 
march  of  retreat." 

Morton's  toilette  was  soon  completed,  and  the  three  associates 
bade  adieu  to  the  bureau. 

Birnie,  who  was  taciturn  and  impenetrable  as  ever,  walked  a 
little  before  as  guide.  They  arrived,  at  length,  at  a  serrurier' s 
shop,  placed  in  an  alley,  near  the  Porte  St.  Denis.  The  serrurier 
himself,  a  tall,  begrimed,  black-bearded  man,  was  taking  the 
shutters  from  his  shop  as  they  approached.  He  and  Birnie 
exchanged  silent  nods  ;  and  the  former,  leaving  his  work,  con- 
ducted them  up  a  very  filthy  flight  of  stairs  to  an  attic,  where  a 
bed,  two  stools,  one  table,  and  an  old  walnut-tree  bureau,  formed 
the  sole  articles  of  furniture.  Gawtrey  looked  rather  ruefully 
round  the  black,  low,  damp  walls,  and  said,  in  a  crest-fallen 
tone, — 

"  We  were  better  off  at  the  Temple  of  Hymen.  But  get  us  a 
bottle  of  wine,  some  eggs,  and  a  fryingpan, — by  Jove,  I  am  a 
capital  hand  at  an  omelet !  " 

The  serrurier  nodded  again,  grinned,  and  withdrew. 

"Rest  here,"  said  Birnie,  in  his  calm,  passionless  voice,  that 
seemed  to  Morton,  however,  to  assume  an  unwonted  tone  of  com- 
mand. "  I  will  go  and  make  the  best  bargain  I  can  for  our  fur- 
niture, buy  fresh  clothes,  and  engage  our  places  for  Tours." 

"  For  Tours?  "  repeated  Morton. 

"Yes,  there  are  some  English  there;  one  can  live  wherever 
there  are  English,"  said  Gawtrey. 

"  Hum  !  "  grunted  Birnie,  drily,  and,  buttoning  up  his  coat,  he 
walked  slowly  away. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  203 

About  noon  he  returned  with  a  bundle  of  clothes,  which  Gaw- 
trey  who  always  regained  his  elasticity  of  spirit  wherever  there  was 
fair  play  to  his  talents,  examined  with  great  attention,  and  many 
exclamations  of  "  Bon,  f'esf  ca." 

"I  have  done  well  with  the  Jew,"  said  Birnie,  drawing  from 
his  coat  pocket  two  heavy  bags,  "One  hundred  and  eighty  napo- 
leons. We  shall  commence  with  a  good  capital." 

"You  are  right,  my  friend,"  said  Gawtrey. 

The  serrurier  was  then  despatched  to  the  best  restaurant  in  the 
neighborhood,  and  the  three  adventurers  made  a  less  Socratic 
dinner  than  might  have  been  expected. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

"  Then  out  again  he  flies  to  wing  his  mazy  round." 

THOMSON'S  Castle  of  Indolence. 

"Again  he  gazed,  'It  is,'  said  he,  'the  same; 
There  sits  he  upright  in  his  seat  secure, 
As  one  whose  conscience  is  correct  and  pure.' " — CRABBE. 

THE  adventurers  arrived  at  Tours,  and  established  themselves 
there  in  a  lodging  without  any  incident  worth  narrating  by  the 
way. 

At  Tours  Morton  had  nothing  to  do  but  take  his  pleasure  and 
enjoy  himself.  He  passed  for  a  young  heir;  Gawtrey  for  his 
tutor — a  doctor  in  divinity ;  Birnie  for  his  valet.  The  task  of 
maintenance  fell  on  Gawtrey,  who  hit  off  his  character  to  a  hair; 
larded  his  grave  jokes  with  University  scraps  of  Latin ;  looked 
big  and  well-fed  ;  wore  knee  breeches  and  a  shovel  hat ;  and 
played  whist  with  the  skill  of  a  veteran  vicar.  By  his  science  in 
that  game,  he  made,  at  first,  enough,  at  least,  to  defray  their 
weekly  expenses.  But,  by  degrees,  the  good  people  at  Tours, 
who,  under  pretence  of  health,  were  there  for  economy,  grew  shy 
of  so  excellent  a  player;  and  though  Gawtrey  always  swore 
solemnly  that  he  played  with  the  most  scrupulous  honor  (an  asse- 
veration which  Morton,  at  least,  implicitly  believed),  and  no 
proof  to  the  contrary  was  ever  detected,  yet  a  first-rate  card- 
player  is  always  a  suspicious  character,  unless  the  losing  parties 
know  exactly  who  he  is.  The  market  fell  off,  and  Gawtrey  at 
length  thought  it  prudent  to  extend  their  travels. 

"Ah!"  said  Mr.  Gawtrey,  "  the  world  nowadays  has  grown 
so  ostentatious,  that  one  cannot  travel  advantageously  without  a 
post  chariot  and  four  horses."  At  length  they  found  themselves 


204  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

at  Milan,  which  at  that  time  was  one  of  the  El  Dorados  for 
gamesters.  Here,  however,  for  want  of  introductions,  Mr.  Gaw- 
trey  found  it  difficult  to  get  into  society.  The  nobles,  proud  and 
rich,  played  high,  but  were  circumspect  in  their  company ;  the 
bourgeoisie,  industrious  and  energetic,  preserved  much  of  the  old 
Lombard  shrewdness;  there  were  no  tables  d'hote  and  public 
reunions.  Gawtrey  saw  his  little  capital  daily  diminishing,  with 
jhe  Alps  at  the  rear,  and  Poverty  in  the  van.  At  length,  always 
on  the  qui  vive,  he  contrived  to  make  acquaintance  with  a  Scotch 
family  of  great  respectability.  He  effected  this  by  picking  up  a 
snuff-box  which  the  Scotchman  had  dropped  in  taking  out  his 
handkerchief.  This  politeness  paved  the  way  to  a  conversation  in 
which  Gawtrey  made  himself  so  agreeable,  and  talked  with  such 
zest  of  the  Modern  Athens,  and  the  tricks  practised  upon  travel- 
lers, that  he  was  presented  to  Mrs.  Macgregor ;  cards  were  inter- 
changed ;  and,  as  Mr.  Gawtrey  lived  in  tolerable  style,  the  Mac- 
gregors  pronounced  him  "  a  vara  genteel  mon."  Once  in  the 
house  of  a  respectable  person,  Gawtrey  contrived  to  turn  himself 
round  and  round,  till  he  burrowed  a  hole  into  the  English  circle 
then  settled  in  Milan.  His  whist-playing  came  into  requisition, 
and  once  more  Fortune  smiled  upon  Skill. 

To  this  house  the  pupil  one  evening  accompanied  the  tutor. 
When  the  whist  party,  consisting  of  two  tables,  was  formed,  the 
young  man  found  himself  left  out  with  an  old  gentleman,  who 
seemed  loquacious  and  goodnatured,  and  who  put  many  questions 
to  Morton,  which  he  found  it  difficult  to  answer.  One  of  the 
whist  tables  was  now  in  a  state  of  revolution,  viz.,  a  lady  had  cut 
out,  and  a  gentleman  cut  in,  when  the  door  opened,  and  Lord 
Lilburne  was  announced. 

Mr.  Macgregor,  rising,  advanced  with  great  respect  to  this  per- 
sonage. 

"I  scarcely  ventured  to  hope  you  would  coom,  Lord  Lilburne, 
the  night  is  so  cold." 

"You  did  not  allow  sufficiently,  then,  for  the  dullness  of  my 
solitary  inn  and  the  attractions  of  your  circle.  Aha !  whist,  I 
see." 

"  You  play  sometimes?  " 

"Very  seldom,  now;  I  have  sown  all  my  wild  oats,  and  even 
the  ace  of  spades  can  scarcely  dig  them  out  again." 

"Ha!  ha!  vara  gude." 

"I  will  look  on;  "  and  Lord  Lilburne  drew  his  chair  to  the 
table,  exactly  opposite  to  Mr.  Gawtrey. 

The  old  gentleman  turned  to  Philip. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  20$ 

"An  extraordinary  man,  Lord  Lilburne;  you  have  heard  of 
him,  of  course?  " 

"No,  indeed;  what  of  him?  "  asked  the  young  man,  rousing 
himself. 

"  What  of  him?"  said  the  old  gentlemen,  with  a  smile;  "why 
the  newspapers,  if  you  ever  read  them,  will  tell  you  enough  of 
the  elegant,  the  witty  Lord  Lilburne ;  a  man  of  eminent  talent, 
though  indolent.  He  was  wild  in  his  youth,  as  clever  men  often 
are ;  but  on  attaining  his  title  and  fortune,  and  marrying  into  the 
family  of  the  then  premier,  he  became  more  sedate.  They  say  he 
might  make  a  great  figure  in  politics  if  he  would.  He  has  a  very 
high  reputation — very.  People  do  say  he  is  still  fond  of  pleasure, 
but  that  is  a  common  failing  amongst  the  aristocracy.  Morality  is 
only  found  in  the  middle  classes,  young  gentleman.  It  is  a  lucky 
family,  that  of  Lilburne ;  his  sister,  Mrs.  Beaufort 

"Beaufort!"  exclaimed  Morton,  and  then  muttered  to  him- 
self, "Ah,  true — true,  I  have  heard  the  name  of  Lilburne 
before." 

"Do  you  know  the  Beau  forts?  Well,  you  remember  how 
luckily  Robert,  Lilburne's  brother-in-law,  came  into  that  fine  pro- 
perty just  as  his  predecessor  was  about  to  marry  a " 

Morton  scowled  at  his  garrulous  acquaintance,  and  stalked 
abruptly  to  the  card  table. 

Ever  since  Lord  Lilburne  had  seated  himself  opposite  to  Mr. 
Gawtrey,  that  gentleman  had  evinced  a  perturbation  of  manner 
that  became  obvious  to  the  company.  He  grew  deadly  pale,  his 
hands  trembled,  he  moved  uneasily  in  his  seat,  he  missed  deal,  he 
trumped  his  partner's  best  diamond,  finally  he  revoked,  threw 
down  his  money,  and  said,  with  a  forced  smile^  "  That  the  heat 
of  the  room  overcame  him."  As  he  rose,  Lord  Lilburne  rose 
also,  and  the  eyes  of  both  met.  Those  of  Lilburne  were  calm, 
but  penetrating  and  inquisitive  in  their  gaze ;  those  of  Gawtrey 
were  like  balls  of  fire.  He  seemed  gradually  to  dilate  in  his 
height,  his  broad  chest  expanded,  he  breathed  hard. 

"  Ah,  Doctor,"  said  Mr.  Macgregor,  "let  me  introduce  you  to 
Lord  Lilburne." 

The  peer  bowed  haughtily ;  Mr.  Gawtrey  did  not  return  the 
salutation,  but  with  a  sort  of  gulp  as  if  he  were  swallowing  some 
burst  of  passion,  strode  to  the  fire;  and  then,  turning  round, 
again  fixed  his  gaze  upon  the  new  guest.  Lilburne,  however, 
who  had  never  lost  his  self-composure  at  this  strange  rudeness, 
was  now  quietly  talking  with  their  host. 

' '  Your  Doctor  seems  an  eccentric  man — a  little  absent — • 
learned,  I  suppose.  Have  you  been  to  Como,  yet?" 


206  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Mr.  Gawtrey  remained  by  the  fire  beating  the  devil's  tattoo 
upon  the  chimney-piece,  and  ever  and  anon  turning  his  glance 
towards  Lilburne,  who  seemed  to  have  forgotten  his  existence. 

Both  these  guests  stayed  till  the  party  broke  up ;  Mr.  Gawtrey 
apparently  wishing  to  outstay  Lord  Lilburne ;  for,  when  the  last 
went  down  stairs,  Mr.  Gawtrey,  nodding  to  his  comrade,  and 
giving  a  hurried  bow  to  the  host,  descended  also.  As  they  passed 
the  porter's  lodge,  they  found  Lilburne  on  the  step  of  his  carriage ; 
he  turned  his  head  abruptly,  and  again  met  Mr.  Gawtrey's  eye ; 
paused  a  moment,  and  whispered  over  his  shoulder : 

"So  we  remember  each  other,  sir?  Let  us  not  meet  again ; 
and  on  that  condition,  bygones  are  bygones." 

"  Scoundrel  !  "  muttered  Gawtrey,  clenching  his  fists  ;  but  the 
peer  had  sprung  into  his  carriage  with  a  lightness  scarcely  to  be 
expected  from  his  lameness,  and  the  wheels  whirled  within  an 
inch  of  the  soi-disant  doctor's  right  pump. 

Gawtrey  walked  on  for  some  moments  in  great  excitement ;  at 
length  he  turned  to  his  companion : 

"Do  you  guess  who  Lord  Lilburne  is?  I  will  tell  you — my 
first  foe  and  Fanny's  grandfather  !  Now,  note  the  justice  of  Fate  : 
Here  is  this  man — mark  well — this  man  who  commenced  life  by 
putting  his  faults  on  my  shoulders !  From  that  little  boss  has  fun- 
gused  out  a  terrible  hump.  This  man  who  seduced  my  affianced 
bride,  and  then  left  her  whole  soul,  once  fair  and  blooming — I 
swear  it — with  its  leaves  fresh  from  the  dews  of  heaven,  one  rank 
leprosy,  this  man  who,  rolling  in  riches,  learned  to  cheat  and 
pilfer  as  a  boy  learns  to  dance  and  play  the  fiddle,  and  (to  damn 
me,  whose  happiness  he  had  blasted)  accused  me  to  the  world  of 
his  own  crime  !  Here  is  this  man,  who  has  not  left  off  one  vice, 
but  added  to  those  of  his  youth  the  bloodless  craft  of  the  veteran 
knave;  here  is  this  man  flattered,  courted,  great,  marching 
through  lanes  of  bowing  parasites  to  an  illustrous  epitaph  and  a 
marble  tomb,  and  I,  a  rogue  too,  if  you  will,  but  rogue  for  my 
bread,  dating  from  him  my  errors  and  my  ruin  !  I — vagabond — 
outcast — skulking  through  tricks  to  avoid  crime — why  the  differ- 
ence ?  Because  one  is  born  rich  and  the  other  poor ;  because  he 
has  no  excuse  for  crime,  and  therefore  no  one  suspects  him  !  " 

The  wretched  man  (for  at  that  moment  he  was  wretched)  paus- 
ed breathless  from  his  passionate  and  rapid  burst,  and  before  him 
rose  in  its  marble  majesty,  with  the  moon  full  upon  its  shining 
spires,  the  wonder  of  Gothic  Italy — the  Cathedral  Church  of 
Milan. 

"Chafe  not  yourself  at  the  universal  fate,"  said  the  young 
man,  with  a  bitter  smile  on  his  lips  and  pointing  to  the  cathedral, 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  207 

"I  have  not  lived  long,  but  I  have  learned  already  enough  to 
know  this — he  who  could  raise  a  pile  like  that,  dedicated  to 
heaven,  would  be  honored  as  a  saint;  he  who  knelt  to  God  by 
the  roadside  under  a  hedge  would  be  sent  to  the  house  of  correc- 
tion as  a  vagabond !  The  difference  between  man  and  man  is 
money,  and  will  be,  when  you,  the  despised  charlatan,  and  Lil- 
burne,  the  honored  cheat,  have  not  left  as  much  dust  behind  you 
as  will  fill  a  snuff-box.  Comfort  yourself,  you  are  in  the 
majority." 

CHAPTER  VII. 

"  A  desert  wild 

Before  them  stretched  bare,  comfortless,  and  vast, 
With  gibbets,  bones,  and  carcasses  defiled." 

THOMSON'S  Castle  of  Indolence. 

MR.  GAWTREY  did  not  wish  to  give  his  foe  the  triumph  of 
thinking  he  had  driven  him  from  Milan  ;  he  resolved  to  stay  and 
brave  it  out ;  but  when  he  appeared  in  public,  he  found  the 
acquaintances  he  had  formed  bow  politely,  but  cross  to  the  other 
side  of  the  way.  No  more  invitations  to  tea  and  cards  showered 
in  upon  the  jolly  parson.  He  was  puzzled,  for  people,  while  they 
shunned  him,  did  not  appear  uncivil.  He  found  out  at  last  that 
a  report  was  circulated  that  he  was  deranged  ;  though  he  could 
not  trace  this  rumor  to  Lord  Lilburne,  he  was  at  no  loss  to  guess 
from  whom  it  had  emanated.  His  own  eccentricities,  especially 
his  recent  manner  at  Mr.  Macgregor's,  gave  confirmation  to  the 
charge.  Again  the  funds  began  to  sink  low  in  the  canvas  bags, 
and,  at  length,  in  despair,  Mr.  Gawtrey  was  obliged  to  quit  the 
field.  They  returned  to  France  through  Switzerland — a  country 
too  poor  for  gamesters ;  and  ever  since  the  interview  with  Lil- 
burne, a  great  change  had  come  over  Gawtrey's  gay  spirit :  he 
grew  moody  and  thoughtful,  he  took  no  pains  to  replenish  the 
common  stock;  he  talked  much  and  seriously  to  his  young  friend 
of  poor  Fanny,  and  owned  that  he  yearned  to  see  her  again.  The 
desire  to  return  to  Paris  haunted  him  like  a  fatality ;  he  saw  the 
danger  that  awaited  him  there,  but  it  only  allured  him  the  more, 
as  the  candle  does  the  moth  whose  wings  it  has  singed.  Birnie, 
who,  in  all  their  vicissitudes  and  wanderings,  their  ups  and  downs, 
retained  the  same  tacit,  immoval  demeanor,  received  with  a  sneer 
the  orders  at  last  to  march  back  upon  the  French  capital,  "You 
would  never  have  left  it,  if  you  had  taken  my  advice,"  he  said, 
and  quitted  the  room. 


205  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Mr.  Gawtrey  gazed  after  him  and  muttered,  "  Is  the  die  then 
cast  ?  ' ' 

"  What  does  he  mean  ?  "  said  Morton. 

"  You  will  know  soon,"  replied  Gawtrey,  and  he  followed  Bir- 
nie ;  and  from  that  time  the  whispered  conferences  with  that  per- 
son, which  had  seemed  suspended  during  their  travels,  were 
renewed. 

******* 

One  morning  three  men  were  seen  entering  Paris  on  foot 
through  the  Porte  St.  Denis.  It  was  a  fine  day  in  spring,  and  the 
old  city  looked  gay  with  its  loitering  passengers  and  gaudy  shops, 
and  under  that  clear  blue  exhilarating  sky,  so  peculiar  to  France. 

Two  of  these  men  walked  abreast,  the  other  preceded  them  a 
few  steps.  The  one  who  went  first — thin,  pale,  and  threadbare — 
yet  seemed  to  suffer  the  least  from  fatigue  ;  he  walked  with  a  long, 
swinging,  noiseless  stride,  looking  to  the  right  and  left  from  the 
corners  of  his  eyes.  Of  the  two  who  followed,  one  was  hand- 
some and  finely  formed,  but  of  a  swarthy  complexion,  young,  yet 
with  a  look  of  care  ;  the  other,  of  sturdy  frame,  leaned  on  a  thick 
stick,  and  his  eyes  were  gloomily  cast  down. 

"  Philip,"  said  the  last,  "  in  coming  back  to  Paris,  I  feel  that 
I  am  coming  back  to  my  grave  !  " 

"  Pooh  !  You  were  equally  despondent  in  our  excursions  else- 
where." 

"  Because  I  was  always  thinking  of  poor  Fanny,  and  because — 
because — Birnie  was  ever  at  me  with  his  horrible  temptations  !  " 

' '  Birnie  !    I  loathe  the  man  !     Will  you  never  get  rid  of  him  ?  " 

"  I  cannot!  Hush  !  he  will  hear  us  !  How  unlucky  we  have 
been  !  And  now  without  a  sous  in  our  pockets — here  the  dung- 
hill— there  the  gaol  !  We  are  in  his  power  at  last  /  " 

"  His  power  !  what  mean  you  ?  " 

"  What  ho  !  Birnie  !  "  cried  Gawtrey,  unheeding  Morton's 
question,  "  Let  us  halt  and  breakfast:  I  am  tired." 

"You  forget!  We  have  no  money  till  we  make  it!"  re- 
turned Birnie,  coldly.  "  Come  to  the  serrurier's — he  will  trust 
us!" 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  209 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

"  Gaunt  Beggary  and  Scorn  with  many  hell-hounds  more." 

THOMSON'S  Castle  of  Indolence. 

"  The  other  was  a  fell,  despiteful  fiend." — Ibia. 

"  Your  happiness  behold !  then  straight  a  wand 
He  waved,  an  anti-magic  power  that  hath 
Truth  from  illusive  falsehood  to  command." — Ibid. 

"  But  what  for  us,  the  children  of  despair, 
Brought  to  the  brink  of  hell — what  hope  remains  ? 
RESOLVE,  RESOLVE  !  " — Ibid. 

IT  may  be  observed  that  there  are  certain  years  in  which  in  a 
civilized  country  some  particular  crime  comes  into  vogue.  It 
flares  its  season,  and  then  burns  out.  Thus  at  one  time  we  have 
Burking,  at  another,  Swingism  ;  now,  suicide  is  in  vogue,  now 
poisoning  tradespeople  in  apple-dumplings ;  now  little  boys  stab 
each  other  with  penknives  ;  now,  common  soldiers  shoot  at  their 
sergeants.  Almost  every  year  there  is  one  crime  peculiar  to  it ; 
a  sort  of  annual  which  overruns  the  country,  but  does  not  bloom 
again.  Unquestionably  the  Press  has  a  great  deal  to  do  with 
these  epidemics.  Let  a  newspaper  once  give  an  account  of  some 
out-of-the-way  atrocity  that  has  the  charm  of  being  novel,  and 
certain  depraved  minds  fasten  to  it  like  leeches.  They  brood 
over  and  revolve  it :  the  idea  grows  up,  a  horrid  phantasmalian 
monomania ;  *  and  all  of  a  sudden,  in  a  hundred  different  places, 
the  one  seed  sown  by  the  leaden  types  springs  up  into  foul  flower- 
ing. But  if  the  first  reported  aboriginal  crime  has  been  attended 
with  impunity,  how  much  more  does  the  imitative  faculty  cling 
to  it.  Ill-judged  mercy  falls,  not  like  dew,  but  like  a  great  heap 
of  manure,  on  the  rank  deed. 

Now  it  happened  that  at  the  time  I  wrote  of,  or  rather  a  little 
before,  there  had  been  detected  and  tried  in  Paris  a  most 
redoubted  coiner.  He  had  carried  on  the  business  with  a  dexter- 
ity that  won  admiration  even  for  the  offence ;  and,  moreover,  he 
had  served  previously  with  some  distinction  at  Austerlitz  and 
Marengo.  The  consequence  was  that  the  public  went  with 
instead  of  against  him,  and  his  sentence  was  transmuted  to  three 

*  An  old  Spanish  writer,  treating  of  the  Inquisition,  has  some  very  striking  remarks  on 
the  kind  of  madness  which,  whenever  some  terrible  notoriety  is  given  to  a  particular  offence, 
leads  persons  of  distempered  fancy  to  accuse  themselves  of  it.  He  observes  that  when  the 
cruelties  of  the  Inquisition  against  the  imaginary  crime  of  sorcery  were  the  most  barbarous, 
this  singular  frenzy  led  numbers  to  accuse  themselves  of  sorcery.  The  publication  and 
celebrity  of  the  crime  begat  the  de»ire  of  the  crimt. 


2IO  rJIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

years'  imprisonment  by  the  government.  For  all  governments  in 
free  countries  aspire  rather  to  be  popular  than  just. 

No  sooner  was  this  case  reported  in  the  journals,  and  even  the 
gravest  took  notice  of  it — which  is  not  common  with  the  scholastic 
journals  of  France, — no  sooner  did  it  make  a  stir  and  a  sensation, 
and  cover  the  criminal  with  celebrity,  than  the  result  became 
noticeable  in  a  very  large  issue  of  false  money. 

Coining  in  the  year  I  now  write  of  was  the  fashionable  crime. 
The  police  were  roused  into  full  vigor :  it  became  known  to  them 
that  there  was  one  gang  in  especial  who  cultivated  this  art  with 
singular  success.  Their  coinage  was,  indeed,  so  good,  so  superior 
to  all  their  rivals,  that  it  was  often  unconsciously  preferred  by  the 
public  to  the  real  mintage.  At  the  same  time  they  carried  en 
their  calling  with  such  secrecy  that  they  utterly  baffled  discovery. 

An  immense  reward  was  offered  by  the  bureau  to  any  one  who 
would  betray  his  accomplices,  and  Monsieur  Favart  was  placed 
at  the  head  of  a  commission  of  inquiry.  This  person  had  him- 
self been  a  faux  monnoyer,  and  was  an  adept  in  the  art,  and  it 
was  he  who  had  discovered  the  redoubted  coiner  who  had  brought 
the  crime  into  such  notoriety  ;  Monsieur  Favart  was  a  man  of  the 
most  vigilant  acuteness,  the  most  indefatigable  research,  and  of  a 
courage  which,  perhaps,  is  more  common  than  we  suppose.  It  is 
a  popular  error  to  suppose  that  courage  means  courage  in  every- 
thing. Put  a  hero  on  board  ship  at  a  five-barred  gate,  and  if  he 
is  not  used  to  hunting  he  will  turn  pale.  Put  a  fox-hunter  on  one 
of  the  Swiss  chasms,  over  which  the  mountaineer  springs  like  a 
roe,  and  his  knees  will  knock  under  him.  People  are  brave  in 
the  dangers  to  which  they  accustom  themselves,  either  in  imagin- 
ation or  practice. 

Monsieur  Favart,  then  was  a  man  of  the  most  daring  bravery 
in  facing  rogues  and  cut-throats.  He  awed  them  with  his  very 
eye ;  yet  he  had  been  known  to  have  been  kicked  down  stairs  by 
his  wife,  and  when  he  was  drawn  into  the  grand  army,  he 
deserted  the  eve  of  his  first  battle.  Such,  as  moralists  say,  is  the 
inconsistency  of  man  ! 

But  Monsieur  Favart  was  sworn  to  trace  the  coiners,  and  he 
had  never  failed  yet  in  any  enterprise  he  undertook.  One  day  he 
presented  himself  to  his  chief  with  a  countenance  so  elated,  that 
that  penetrating  functionary  said  to  him  at  once  • 

"  You  have  heard  of  our  messieurs  !  " 

"  I  have:  I  am  to  visit  them  to-night." 

"  Bravo  !     How  many  men  will  you  take?  " 

"From  twelve  to  twenty  to  leave  without  on  guard.  But  I 
must  enter  alone.  Such  is  the  condition  :  an  accomplice  who 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  211 

fears  his  own  throat  too  much  to  be  openly  a  betrayer,  will  intro- 
duce me  to  the  house, — nay,  to  the  very  room.  By  his  descrip- 
tion, it  is  necessary  I  should  know  the  exact  locale  in  order  to  cut 
off  retreat ;  so  to-morrow  night  I  shall  surround  the  beehive  and 
take  the  honey." 

"They  are  desperate  fellows,  these  coiners,  always;  better  be 
cautious." 

"You  forget,  I  was  one  of  them,  and  know  the  masonry." 

About  the  same  time  this  conversation  was  going  on  at  the 
bureau  of  the  police,  in  another  part  of  the  town  Morton  and 
Gawtrey  were  seated  alone.  It  is  some  weeks  since  they  entered 
Paris,  and  spring  has  mellowed  into  summer.  The  house  in  which 
they  lodged  was  in  the  lordly  quartier  of  the  Faubourg  St.  Ger- 
main ;  the  neighboring  streets  were  venerable  with  the  ancient 
edifices  of  a  fallen  noblesse  ;  but  their  tenement  was  in  a  narrow, 
dingy  lane,  and  the  building  itself  seemed  beggarly  and  ruinous. 
The  apartment  was  in  an  attic  on  the  sixth  story,  and  the  window, 
placed  at  the  back  of  the  lane,  looked  upon  another  row  of  houses 
of  a  better  description,  that  communicated  with  one  of  the  great 
streets  of  the  quarticr.  The  space  between  their  abode  and  their 
opposite  neighbors  was  so  narrow  that  the  sun  could  scarcely 
pierce  between.  In  the  height  of  summer  might  be  found  there 
a  perpetual  shade. 

The  pair  were  seated  by  the  window.  Gawtrey,  well-dressed, 
smooth-shaven,  as  in  his  palmy  time  ;  Morton,  in  the  same  gar- 
ments with  which  he  had  entered  Paris,  weather-stained  and  rag- 
ged. Looking  towards  the  casements  of  the  attic  in  the  opposite 
house,  Gawtrey  said,  mutteringly  :  "  I  wonder  where  Birnie  has 
been,  and  why  he  is  not  returned:  I  grow  suspicious  of  that 
man." 

"Suspicious  of  what?"  asked  Morton.  "Of  his  honesty? 
Would  he  rob  you?" 

"  Rob  me  !  Humph — perhaps!  But  you  see  I  am  in  Paris,  in 
spite  of  the  hints  of  the  police  ;  he  may  denounce  me." 

"  Why  then  suffer  him  to  lodge  away  from  you  ?  " 

"Why?  because,  by  having  separate  houses,  there  are  two 
channels  of  escape.  A  dark  night,  and  a  ladder  thrown  across 
from  window  to  window,  he  is  with  us,  or  we  with  him." 

"  But  wherefore  such  precautions?  You  blind — you  deceive 
me;  what  have  you  done?  what  is  your  employment  now?  You 
are  mute.  Hark  you,  Gawtrey !  I  have  pinned  my  fate  to  you 
—I  am  fallen  from  hope  itself.  At  times  it  almost  makes  me  mad 
to  look  back  ;  and  yet  you  do  not  trust  me.  Since  your  return  to 
Paris  you  are  absent  whole  nights — often  days;  you  are  moody 


212  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

and  thoughtful;  yet,  whatever  your  business,  it  seems  to  bring 
you  ample  returns." 

(:  You  think  that"  said  Gawtrey,  mildly,  and  with  a  sort  of 
pity  in  his  voice,  "yet  you  refuse  to  take  even  the  money  to 
change  those  rags." 

"  Because  I  know  not  how  the  money  was  gained.  Ah  !  Gaw- 
trey ;  I  am  not  toe  proud  for  charity,  but  I  am  for — " 

He  checked  the  word  uppermost  in  his  thoughts,  and  resumed  : 

' '  Yes ;  your  occupations  seem  lucrative.  It  was  but  yesterday 
Birnie  gave  me  fifty  napoleons,  for  which  he  said  you  wished 
change  in  silver." 

' '  Did  he  ?     The  ras —     Well !  and  you  got  change  for  them  ? '  • 

"I  know  not  why,  but  I  refused." 

"  That  was  right,  Philip.     Do  nothing  that  man  tells  you." 

"Will  you  then  trust  me?  You  are  engaged  in  some  horrible 
traffic  !  it  may  be  blood  !  I  am  no  longer  a  boy — I  have  a  will 
of  my  own — I  will  not  be  silently  and  blindly  entrapped  to  per- 
dition. If  1  march  thither,  it  shall  be  with  my  own  consent. 
Trust  me,  and  this  day,  or  we  part  to-morrow." 

"  Be  ruled.     Some  secrets  it  is  better  not  to  know." 

"  It  matters  not !     I  have  come  to  my  decision  :  I  ask  yours." 

Gawtrey  paused  for  some  moments  in  deep  thought.  At  last, 
he  lifted  his  eyes  to  Philip,  and  replied  : 

"  Well,  then,  if  it  must  be.  Sooner  or  later  it  must  have  been 
so,  and  I  want  a  confidant.  You  are  bold,  and  will  not  shrink. 
You  desire  to  know  my  occupation — will  you  witness  it  to- 
night? " 

"  I  am  prepared  :  to-night !  " 

Here  a  step  was  heard  on  the  stairs — a  knock  at  the  door — and 
Birnie  entered. 

He  drew  aside  Gawtrey,  and  whispered  him,  as  usual,  for  some 
moments. 

Gawtrey  nodded  his  head,  and  then  said  aloud : 

"  To-morrow  we  shall  talk  without  reserve  before  my  young 
friend.  To-night  he  joins  us." 

"To-night!  very  well!"  said  Birnie,  with  his  cold  sneer. 
"He  must  take  the  oath;  and  you,  with  your  life,  will  be  respon- 
sible for  his  honesty?  " 

"  Ay  !  it  is  the  rule." 

"Good-by,  then,  till  we  meet,"  said  Birnie,  and  withdrew. 

"  I  wonder,"  said  Gawtrey,  musingly  and  between  his  grinded 
teeth,  "whether  I  shall  ever  have  a  good  fair  shot  at  that  fellow? 
Ho  !  ho  !  "  and  his  laugh  shook  the  walls. 

Morton  looked  hard  at  Gawtrey,  as  the  latter  now  sunk  down 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  213 

in  his  chair,  and  gazed  with  a  vacant  stare,  that  seemed  almost  to 
partake  of  imbecility,  upon  the  opposite  wall.  The  careless,  reck- 
less, jovial  expression,  which  usually  characterized  the  features  of 
the  man,  had  for  some  weeks  given  place  to  a  restless,  anxious,  and 
at  times  ferocious,  aspect ;  like  the  beast  that  first  finds  a  sport 
while  the  hounds  are  yet  afar,  and  his  limbs  are  yet  strong,  in  the 
chase  which  marks  him  for  his  victim,  but  grows  desperate  with 
rage  and  fear  as  the  day  nears  its  close,  and  the  death-dogs  pant 
hard  upon  his  track  ;  but  at  that  moment  the  strong  features,  with 
their  gnarled  muscle  and  iron  sinews,  seemed  to  have  lost  every 
sign  both  of  passion  and  the  will,  and  to  be  locked  in  a  stolid  and 
dull  repose.  At  last  he  looked  up  at  Morton,  and  said,  with  a 
smile  like  that  of  an  old  man  in  his  dotage: 

"I'm  thinking  that  my  life  has  been  one  mistake?  I  had 
talents  ;  you  would  not  fancy  it,  but  once  I  was  neither  a  fool  nor 
a  villain  !  Odd,  isn't  it?  Just  reach  me  the  brandy." 

But  Morton,  with  a  slight  shudder,  turned  and  left  the  room. 

He  walked  on  mechanically,  and  gained,  at  last,  the  superb 
Qt/ai  that  borders  the  Seine :  there,  the  passengers  became  more 
frequent ;  gay  equipages  rolled  along;  the  white  and  lofty  man- 
sions looked  fair  and  stately  in  the  clear  blue  sky  of  early  summer; 
beside  him  flowed  the  sparkling  river,  animated  with  the  painted 
baths  that  floated  on  its  surface :  earth  was  merry  and  heaven 
serene  :  his  heart  was  dark  through  all :  Night  within — Morning 
beautiful  without!  At  last  he  paused  by  that  bridge,  stately  with 
the  statues  of  those  whom  the  caprice  of  time  honors  with  a 
name;  for  though  Zeus  and  his  gods  be  overthrown,  while  earth 
exists  will  live  the  worship  of  Dead  Men — the  bridge  by  which 
you  pass  from  the  royal  Tuileries,  or  the  luxurious  streets  beyond 
the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  to  the  Senate  of  the  emancipated  People,  and 
the  gloomy  and  desolate  grandeur  of  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain, 
in  whose  venerable  hands  the  impoverished  descendants  of  the 
old  feudal  tyrants,  whom  the  birth  of  the  Senate  overthrew,  yet 
congregate — the  ghosts  of  departed  powers  proud  of  the  shadows 
of  great  names.  As  the  English  outcast  paused  midway  on  the 
bridge,  and  for  the  first  time  lifting  his  head  from  his  bosom, 
gazed  around,  there  broke  at  once  on  his  remembrance  that  terri- 
ble and  fatal  evening  when,  hopeless,  friendless,  desperate,  he  had 
begged  for  charity  of  his  uncle's  hireling,  with  all  the  feelings  that 
then  (so  imperfectly  and  lightly  touched  on  in  his  brief  narrative 
to  Gawtrey)  had  raged  and  blackened  in  his  breast,  urging  to  the 
resolution  he  had  adopted,  casting  him  on  the  ominous  friendship 
of  the  man  whose  guidance  he  even  then  had  suspected  and  dis- 
trusted. The  spot  in  either  city  had  had  a  certain  similitude  an4 


2*4  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

correspondence  each  with  each  :  at  the  first,  he  had  consummated 
his  despair  of  human  destinies;  he  had  dared  to  forget  the  Provi- 
dence of  God;  he  had  arrogated  his  fate  to  himself:  by  the  first 
bridge  he  had  taken  his  resolve;  by  the  last  he  stood  in  awe  at  the 
result !  stood  no  less  poor,  no  less  abject,  equally  in  rags  and 
squalor ;  but  was  his  crest  as  haughty  and  his  eye  as  fearless,  for 
was  his  conscience  as  free  and  his  honor  as  unstained  ?  Those 
arches  of  stone — those  rivers  that  rolled  between,  seemed  to  him 
then  to  take  a  more  mystic  and  typical  sense  than  belongs  to  the 
outer  world — they  were  the  bridges  to  the  Rivers  of  his  Life. 
Plunged  in  thoughts  so  confused  and  dim  that  he  could  scarcely 
distinguish,  through  the  chaos,  the  one  streak  of  light  which,  per- 
haps, heralded  the  reconstruction  or  regeneration  of  the  elements 
of  his  soul,  two  passengers  halted,  also,  by  his  side. 

"You  will  be  late  for  the  debate,"  said  one  of  them  to  the  other, 
"Why  do  you  stop?" 

"  My  friend,"  said  the  other,  "  I  never  pass  this  spot  without 
recalling  the  time  when  I  stood  here  without  a  sou,  or,  as  I  thought, 
a  chance  of  one,  and  impiously  meditated  self-destruction." 

"  You  .' — now  so  rich — so  fortunate  in  repute  and  station  !  Is 
it  possible?  How  was  it?  A  lucky  chance?  A  sudden  legacy?" 

"No:  Time,  Faith,  and  Energy — the  three  Friends  God  has 
given  to  the  Poor  !  " 

The  men  moved  on;  but  Morton,  who  had  turned  his  face 
towards  them,  fancied  that  the  last  speaker  fixed  on  him  his 
bright,  cheerful  eye,  with  a  meaning  look ;  and  when  the  man 
was  gone,  he  repeated  those  words,  and  hailed  them  in  his  heart 
of  hearts  as  an  augury  from  above. 

Quickly,  then,  and  as  if  by  magic,  the  former  confusion  of  his 
mind  seemed  to  settle  into  distinct  shapes  of  courage  and  resolve. 
"Yes,"  he  muttered;  "I  will  keep  this  night's  appointment;  I 
will  learn  the  secret  of  these  men's  life.  In  my  inexperience  and 
destitution,  1  have  suffered  myself  to  be  led  hitherto  into  a  part- 
nership, if  not  with  vice  and  crime,  at  least  with  subterfuge  and 
trick.  I  awake  from  my  reckless  boyhood — my  unworthy  palter- 
ings  with  my  better  self.  If  Gawtrey  be  as  I  dread  to  find  him ; 
if  he  be  linked  in  some  guilty  and  hateful  traffic  with  that  loath- 
some accomplice,  I  will — "He  paused,  for  his  heart  whispered, 
"Well,  and  even  so, — the  guilty  man  clothed  and  fed  thee  ! " 
"  I  will,"  resumed  his  thought,  in  answer  to  his  heart;  "I  will 
go  on  my  knees  to  him  to  fly  while  there  is  yet  time,  to  work — 
beg — starve — perish  even — rather  than  lose  the  right  to  look  man 
in  the  face  without  a  blush,  and  kneel  to  his  God  without 
remorse! " 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  2 15 

And  as  he  thus  ended,  he  felt  suddenly  as  if  he  himself  were 
restored  to  the  perception  and  the  joy  of  the  Nature  and  the  World 
around  him;  the  NIGHT  had  vanished  from  his  soul ;  he  inhaled 
the  balm  and  freshness  of  the  air ;  he  comprehended  the  delight 
which  the  liberal  June  was  scattering  over  the  earth ;  he  looked 
above,  and  his  eyes  were  suffused  with  pleasure,  at  the  smile  of  the 
soft  blue  skies.  The  MORNING  became,  as  it  were,  a  part  of  his 
own  being ;  and  he  felt  that  as  the  world  in  spite  of  the  storms  is 
fair,  so  in  spite  of  evil  God  is  good.  He  walked  on ;  he  passed 
the  bridge,  but  his  step  was  no  more  the  same,  he  forgot  his  rags. 
Why  should  he  be  ashamed?  And  thus,  in  the  very  flush  of  this 
new  and  strange  elation  and  elasticity  of  spirit,  he  came  unawares 
upon  a  group  of  young  men,  lounging  before  the  porch  of  one  of 
the  chief  hotels  in  that  splendid  Rue  de  Rivoli,  wherein  Wealth 
and  the  English  have  made  their  homes.  A  groom,  mounted,  was 
leading  another  horse  up  and  down  the  road,  and  the  young  men 
were  making  their  comments  of  approbation  upon  both  the  horses, 
especially  the  one  led,  which,  was,  indeed,  of  uncommon  beauty 
and  great  value.  Even  Morton,  in  whom  the  boyish  passion  of 
his  earlier  life  yet  existed,  paused  to  turn  his  experienced  and 
admiring  eye  upon  the  stately  shape  and  pace  of  the  noble  animal, 
and  as  he  did  so,  a  name  too  well  remembered  came  upon  his  ear, 

"  Certainly,  Arthur  Beaufort  is  the  most  enviable  fellow  in 
Europe  ! ' ' 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  another  of  the  young  men;  "  he  has  plenty 
of  money,  is  good-looking,  devilish  good-natured,  clever,  and 
spends  like  a  prince." 

"  Has  the  best  horses  !  " 

"  The  best  luck  at  roulette  !  " 

"  The  prettiest  girls  in  love  with  him  !  " 

"  And  no  one  enjoys  life  more.     Ah  !  here  he  is  !  " 

The  group  parted  as  a  light,  graceful  figure  came  out  of  a 
jeweler's  shop  that  adjoined  the  hotel,  and  halted  gaily  amongst 
the  loungers.  Morton's  first  impulse  was  to  hurry  from  the  spot ; 
his  second  impulse  arrested  his  step,  and  a  little  apart,  and  half- 
hid  beneath  one  of  the  arches  of  the  colonade  which  adorns  the 
street,  the  Outcast  gazed  upon  the  Heir.  There  was  no  compari- 
son in  the  natural  personal  advantages  of  the  two  young  men ; 
for  Philip  Morton,  despite  all  the  hardships  of  his  rough  career, 
had  now  grown  up  and  ripened  into  a  rare  perfection  of  form  and 
feature.  His  broad  chest,  his  erect  air,  his  lithe  and  symmetrical 
length  of  limb,  united,  happily,  the  attributes  of  activity  and 
strength  ;  and  though  there  was  no  delicacy  of  youthful  bloom 
upon  his  dark  cheek,  and  though  lines  which  should  have  come 


2l6  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

later  marred  its  smoothness  with  the  signs  of  care  and  thought, 
yet  an  expression  of  intelligence  and  daring,  equally  beyond  his 
years,  and  the  evidence  of  hardy,  abstemious,  vigorous  health, 
served  to  show  to  the  full  advantage  the  outline  of  features  which, 
noble  and  regular,  though  stern  and  masculine,  the  artist  might 
have  borrowed  for  his  ideal  of  a  young  Spartan  arming  for  his 
first  battle.  Arthur,  slight  to  feebleness,  and  with  the  paleness, 
partly  of  constitution,  partly  of  gay  excess,  on  his  fair  and  clear 
complexion,  had  features  far  less  symmetrical  and  impressive  than 
his  cousin  :  but  what  then  ?  All  that  are  bestowed  by  elegance  in 
dress,  the  refinements  of  luxurious  habit,  the  nameless  grace  that 
comes  from  a  mind  and  manner  polished — the  one  by  literary 
culture,  the  other  by  social  intercourse — invested  the  person  of 
the  heir  with  a  fascination  that  rude  Nature  alone  ever  fails  to 
give.  And  about  him  there  was  a  gaiety,  an  airiness  of  spirit,  an 
atmosphere  of  enjoyment,  which  bespoke  one  who  is  in  love  with  life. 

"  Why,  this  is  lucky  !  I'm  so  glad  to  see  you  all !  "  said  Arthur 
Beaufort,  with  that  silver-ringing  tone,  and  charming  smile, 
which  are  to  the  happy  spring  of  man  what  its  music  and  its  sun- 
shine are  to  the  spring  of  earth.  "You  must  dine  with  me  at 
Verey's.  1  want  something  to  rouse  me  to-day  ;  for  I  did  not  get 
home  from  the  Salon*  till  four  this  morning." 

"  But  you  won?  " 

' '  Yes,  Marsden.  Hang  it !  I  always  win  :  I  who  could  so  well 
afford  to  lose :  I'm  quite  ashamed  of  my  luck  !  " 

"It  is  easy  to  spend  what  one  wins,"  observed  Mr.  Marsden, 
sententiously ;  "  and  I  see  you  have  been  at  the  jeweler's!  A 
present  for  Cecile?  Well,  don't  blush,  my  dear  fellow.  What  is 
life  without  women  ?  " 

"  And  wine  ?  "  said  a  second. 

"  And  play  ?  "  said  a  third. 

"  And  wealth  ?"  said  a  fourth. 

"  And  you  enjoy  them  all !  Happy  fellow  !  "  said  a  fifth. 

The  Outcast  pulled  his  hat  over  his  brows  and  walked  away. 

"This  dear  Paris!"  said  Beaufort,  as  his  eye  carelessly  and 
unconsciously  followed  the  dark  form  retreating  through  the 
arches — "this  dear  Paris  !  I  must  make  the  most  of  it  while  I 
stay  !  I  have  only  been  here  a  few  weeks,  and  next  week  I  must 
go." 

"  Pooh  !  your  health  is  better  :  you  don't  look  like  the  same 
man." 

"  You  think  so  really?  Still  I  don't  know  :  the  doctors  say  that 

"The  most  celebrated  gaming-house  in  Paris  in  the  day  before  gaming-houses  were  sup- 
pressed by  the  well-directed  energy  of  the  government, 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  217 

I  must  either  go  to  the  German  waters — the  season  is  begun — or — " 

"  Or  what?" 

"Live  less  with  such  pleasant  companions,  my  dear  fellow ! 
But  as  you  say,  what  is  life  without " 

"  Women  !  " 

"Wine!" 

"  Play  !  " 

"Wealth!" 

"  Ha  !  ha  !   '  Throw  physic  to  the  dogs :  I'll  none  of  it !  ' 

And  Arthur  leaped  lightly  on  his  saddle,  and  as  he  rode  gaily 
on,  humming  the  favorite  air  of  the  last  opera,  the  hoofs  of  his 
horse  splashed  the  mud  over  a  foot-passenger  halting  at  the  cross- 
ing. Morton  checked  the  fiery  exclamation  rising  to  his  lips; 
and  gazing  after  the  brilliant  form  that  hurried  on  towards  the 
Champs  Elysees,  his  eye  caught  the  statues  on  the  bridge,  and  a 
voice,  as  of  a  cheering  angel,  whispered  again  to  his  heart, 

"  TIME,  FAITH,  ENERGY  !  " 

The  expression  of  his  countenance  grew  calm  at  once,  and  as 
he  continued  his  rambles  it  was  with  a  mind  that,  casting  off  the 
burdens  of  the  past,  looked  serenely  and  steadily  on  the  obstacles 
and  hardships  of  the  future.  We  have  seen  that  a  scruple  of 
conscience,  or  of  pride,  not  without  its  nobleness,  had  made  him 
refuse  the  importunities  of  Gawtrey  for  less  sordid  raiment ;  the 
same  feeling  made  it  his  custom  to  avoid  sharing  the  luxurious 
and  dainty  food  with  which  Gawtrey  was  wont  to  regale  himself. 
For  that  strange  man,  whose  wonderful  felicity  of  temperament 
and  constitution  rendered  him,  in  all  circumstances,  keenly  alive 
to  the  hearty  and  animal  enjoyments  of  life,  would  still  emerge, 
as  the  day  declined,  from  their  wretched  apartment,  and,  trusting 
to  his  disguises,  in  which  indeed  he  possessed  a  masterly  art,  repair 
to  one  of  the  better  description  of  restaurants,  and  feast  away  his 
cares  for  the  moment.  William  Gawtrey  would  not  have  cared 
three  straws  for  the  curse  of  Damocles.  The  sword  over  his 
head  would  never  have  spoiled  his  appetite  !  He  had  lately,  too, 
taken  to  drinking  much  more  deeply  than  he  had  been  used  to  do ; 
the  fine  intellect  of  the  man  was  growing  thickened  and  dulled ; 
and  this  was  a  spectacle  that  Morton  could  not  bear  to  contem- 
plate. Yet  so  great  was  Gawtrey's  vigor  of  health,  that,  after 
draining  wine  and  spirits  enough  to  have  despatched  a  company 
of  fox-hunters,  and  after  betraying,  sometimes  in  uproarious  glee, 
sometimes  in  maudlin  self-bewailings,  that  he  himself  was  not 
quite  invulnerable  to  the  thyrsus  of  the  god,  he  would,  on  any 
call  en  his  energies,  or  especially  before  departing  on  those  mys- 
terious expeditions  which  kept  him  from  home  half,  and  some- 


2l8  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

times  all,  the  night,  plunge  his  head  into  cold  water,  drink  as 
much  of  the  lymph  as  a  groom  would  have  shuddered  to  bestow- 
on  a  horse ;  close  his  eyes  in  a  doze  for  half  an  hour,  and  wake, 
cool,  sober,  and  collected,  as  if  he  had  lived  according  to  the 
precepts  of  Socrates  or  Cornaro  ! 

But  to  return  to  Morton.  It  was  his  habit  to  avoid  as  much  as 
possible  sharing  the  good  cheer  of  his  companion ;  and  now,  as 
he  entered  the  Champs  Elysees,  he  saw  a  little  family,  consisting 
of  a  young  mechanic,  his  wife,  and  two  children,  who,  with  that 
love  of  harmless  recreation  which  yet  characterizes  the  French, 
had  taken  advantage  of  a  holyday  in  the  craft,  and  were  enjoying 
their  simple  meal  under  the  shadow  of  the  trees.  Whether  in 
hunger  or  in  envy,  Morton  paused  and  contemplated  the  happy 
group.  Along  the  road  rolled  the  equipages  and  trampled  the 
steeds  of  those  to  whom  all  life  is  a  holiday.  There,  was 
Pleasure;  under  those  trees  was  Happiness.  One  of  the  children, 
a  little  boy  of  about  six  years  old,  observing  the  attitude  and  gaze 
of  the  passing  wayfarer,  ran  to  him,  and  holding  up  a  fragment  of  a 
coarse  kind  of  cake,  said  to  him  winningly:  ''Take  it — I  have 
had  enough  !  "  The  child  reminded  Morton  of  his  brother; 
his  heart  melted  within  him ;  he  lifted  the  young  Samaritan 
in  his  arms,  and,  as  he  kissed  him,  wept. 

The  mother  observed  and  rose  also.  She  laid  her  hand  on  his 
own :  "  Poor  boy !  why  do  you  weep  ?  Can  we  relieve  you  ?  " 

Now  that  bright  gleam  of  human  nature,  suddenly  darting  across 
the  sombre  recollections  and  associations  of  his  past  life,  seemed 
to  Morton,  as  if  it  came  from  Heaven  in  approval  and  in  blessing 
of  this  attempt  at  reconciliation  to  his  fate. 

"  I  thank  you,"  said  he,  placing  the  child  on  the  ground,  and 
passing  his  hand  over  his  eyes:  "I  thank  you.  Yes!  Let  me 
sit  down  amongst  you."  And  he  sat  down,  the  child  by  his  side, 
and  partook  of  their  fare,  and  was  merry  with  them, — the  proud 
Philip  !  Had  he  not  begun  to  discover  the  "precious  jewel  "  in 
the  ' '  ugly  and  venomous  ' '  Adversity  ? 

The  mechanic,  though  a  gay  fellow  on  the  whole,  was  not  with- 
out some  of  that  discontent  of  his  station  which  is  common  with 
his  class ;  he  vented  it,  however,  not  in  murmurs,  but  in  jests. 
He  was  satirical  on  the  carriages  and  the  horsemen  that  passed  ; 
and  lolling  on  the  grass,  ridiculed  his  betters  at  his  ease. 

"  Hush !  "  said  his  wife,  suddenly  ;  "  here  comes  Madame  de 
Merville;  "  and  rising  as  she  spoke,  she  made  a  respectful  inclina- 
tion of  her  head  towards  an  open  carriage  that  was  passing  very 
slowly  towards  the  town. 

«  Madame  de  Merville  !  "  repeated  the  husband,  rising  also,  and 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  2 19 

lifting  his  cap  from  his  head.  "  Ah  !  I  have  nothing  to  say 
against  her  !  " 

Morton  looked  instinctively  towards  the  carriage,  and  saw  a  fair 
countenance  turned  graciously  to  answer  the  silent  salutations  of 
the  mechanic  and  his  wife — a  countenance  that  had  long  haunted 
his  dreams,  though  of  late  it  had  faded  away  beneath  harsher 
thoughts — the  countenance  of  the  stranger  whom  he  had  seen  at 
the  bureaii  of  Gawtrey,  when  that  worthy  personage  had  borne  a 
more  mellifluous  name.  He  started  and  changed  color ;  the  lady 
herself  now  seemed  suddenly  to  recognize  him,  for  their  eyes  met, 
and  she  bent  forward  eagerly.  She  pulled  the  check-string — the 
carriage  halted — she  beckoned  to  the  mechanic's  wife,  who  went 
up  to  the  roadside. 

"  I  worked  once  for  that  lady,"  said  the  man,  with  a  tone  of 
feeling,  "  and  when  my  wife  fell  ill  last  winter,  she  paid  the  doc- 
tors. Ah,  she  is  an  angel  of  charity  and  kindness!  " 

Morton  scarcely  heard  this  eulogium,  for  he  observed,  by  some- 
thing eager  and  inquisitive  in  the  face  of  Madame  de  Merville, 
and  by  the  sudden  manner  in  which  the  mechanic's  helpmate 
turned  her  head  to  the  spot  on  which  he  stood,  that  he  was  the 
object  of  their  conversation.  Once  more  he  became  suddenly 
aware  of  his  ragged  dress,  and  with  a  natural  shame — a  fear  that 
charity  might  be  extended  to  him  from  her — he  muttered  an 
abrupt  farewell  to  the  operative,  and  without  another  glance  at  the 
carriage,  walked  away. 

Before  he  had  got  many  paces  the  wife,  however,  came  up  to 
him  breathless.  "  Madame  de  Merville  would  speak  to  you,  sir  ! " 
she  said,  with  more  respect  than  she  had  hitherto  thrown  into  her 
manner.  Philip  paused  an  instant,  and  again  strode  on. 

"  It  must  be  some  mistake,"  he  said,  hurriedly:  "  I  have  no 
right  to  expect  such  an  honor." 

He  struck  across  the  road,  gained  the  opposite  side,  and  had  van- 
ished from  Madame  de  Merville's  eyes  before  the  woman  regained 
the  carriage.  But  still  that  calm,  pale,  and  somewhat  mel- 
ancholy face  presented  itself  before  him  ;  and  as  he  walked  again 
through  the  town,  sweet  and  gentle  fancies  crowded  confusedly 
on  his  heart.  On  that  soft  summer  day,  memorable  for  so  many 
silent  but  mighty  events  in  that  inner  life  which  prepares  the 
catastrophes  of  an  outer  one ;  as  in  the  region  of  which  Virgil 
has  sung,  the  images  of  men  to  be  born  hereafter  repose  or  glide 
— on  that  soft  summer  day,  he  felt  he  had  reached  the  age  when 
Youth  begins  to  clothe  in  some  human  shape  its  first  vague  ideal 
of  desire  and  love. 

In  such  thoughts,  and  still  wandering,  the  day  wore  away,  till 


220  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

he  found  himself  in  one  of  the  lanes  that  surround  that  glittering 
Microcosm  of  the  vices,  the  frivolities,  the  hollow  show,  and  the 
real  beggary  of  the  gay  City — the  gardens  and  the  galleries  of  the 
Palais  Royal.  Surprised  at  the  lateness  of  the  hour — it  was  then 
on  the  stroke  of  seven — he  was  about  to  return  homewards,  when 
the  loud  voice  of  Gawtrey  sounded  behind,  and  that  personage, 
tapping  him  on  the  back,  said  : 

''Hollo,  my  young  friend,  well  met !  This  will  be  a  night  of 
trial  to  you.  Empty  stomachs  produce  weak  nerves.  Come 
along  !  you  must  dine  with  me.  A  good  dinner  and  a  bottle  of 
old  wine — come  !  Nonsense,  I  say  you  shall  come  ?  Vive  la 
joie  /" 

While  speaking  he  had  linked  his  arm  in  Morton's,  and  hurried 
him  on  several  paces  in  spite  of  his  struggles ;  but  just  as  the 
words  Vive  lajoie  left  his  lips,  he  stood  still  and  mute,  as  if  a  thun- 
derbolt had  fallen  at  his  feet ;  and  Morton  felt  that  heavy  arm 
shiver  and  tremble  like  a  leaf.  He  looked  up,  and  just  at  the 
entrance  of  that  part  of  the  Palais  Royal  in  which  are  situated 
the  restaurants  of  Verey  and  Vefour,  he  saw  two  men  standing 
but  a  few  paces  before  them,  and  gazing  full  on  Gawtrey  and 
himself. 

"It  is  my  evil  genius,"  muttered  Gawtrey,  grinding  his  teeth. 

"  And  mine !  "  said  Morton. 

The  younger  of  the  two  men  thus  apostrophized  made  a  step 
towards  Philip,  when  his  companion  drew  him  back  and  whis- 
pered :  "  What  are  you  about — Do  you  know  that  young  man?  " 

"  He  is  my  cousin  ;    Philip  Beaufort's  natural  son  !  " 

"Is  he  !  then  discard  him  forever.  He  is  with  the  most  dan- 
gerous knave  in  Europe !  ' ' 

As  Lord  Lilburne — for  it  was  he — thus  whispered  his  nephew, 
Gawtrey  strode  up  to  him ;  and,  glaring  full  in  his  face,  said  in  a 
deep  and  hollow  tone :  "  There  is  a  hell,  my  lord, — I  go  to  drink 
to  our  meeting  !  "  Thus  saying,  he  took  off  his  hat  with  a  cere- 
monious mockery,  and  disappeared  within  the  adjoining  restau- 
rant, kept  by  Vefour. 

"A  hell !  "  said  Lilburne,  with  his  frigid  smile  ;  "the  rogue's 
head  runs  upon  gaming-houses  !  ' ' 

"And  I  have  suffered  Philip  again  to  escape  me,"  said  Arthur, 
in  self-reproach  :  for  while  Gawtrey  had  addressed  Lord  Lilburne, 
Morton  had  plunged  back  amidst  the  labyrinth  of  alleys.  "  How 
have  I  kept  my  oath  ?  " 

"Come  !  your  guests  must  have  arrived  by  this  time.  As  for 
that  wretched  young  man,  depend  upon  it  that  he  is  corrupted 
body  and  soul." 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  221 

"  But  be  is  my  own  cousin." 

''Pooh  !  there  is  no  relationship  in  natural  children;  besides, 
he  will  find  you  out  fast  enough.  Ragged  claimants  are  not  long 
too  proud  to  beg. ' ' 

"You  speak  in  earnest?"  said  Arthur,  irresolutely. 

"Ay !  trust  my  experience  of  the  world — Allans  !  " 

And  in  a  cabinet  of  the  very  restaurant,  adjoining  that  in  which 
the  solitary  Gawtrey  gorged  his  conscience;  Lilburne,  Arthur,  and 
their  gay  friends,  soon  forgetful  of  all  but  the  roses  of  the  moment, 
bathed  their  airy  spirits  in  the  dews  of  the  mirthful  wine.  Oh, 
extremes  of  life  !  Oh,  Night !  Oh,  Morning  ! 

CHAPTER  IX. 

"  Meantime  a  moving  scene  was  open  laid, 
That  lazar  house." 

THOMSON — Castle  of  Indolence. 

IT  was  near  midnight.  At  the  mouth  of  the  lane  in  which 
Gawtrey  resided  there  stood  four  men.  Not  far  distant,  in  the 
broad  street  at  angles  with  the  lane,  were  heard  the  wheels  of 
carriages  and  the  sound  of  music.  A  lady,  fair  in  form,  tender 
of  heart,  stainless  in  repute,  was  receiving  her  friends  ! 

"  Monsieur  Favart,"  said  one  of  the  men  to  the  smallest  of  the 
four;  "you  understand  the  conditions:  20,000  francs  and  a  free 
pardon?" 

"  Nothing  more  reasonable — it  is  understood.  Still  I  confess 
that  I  should  like  to  have  my  men  close  at  hand.  I  am  not  given 
to  fear ;  but  this  is  a  dangerous  experiment. ' ' 

' '  You  knew  the  danger  beforehand  and  subscribed  to  it ;  you 
must  enter  alone  with  me,  or  not  at  all.  Mark  you,  the  men  are 
sworn  to  murder  him  who  betrays  them.  Not  for  twenty  times 
20,000  francs  would  I  have  them  know  me  as  the  informer.  My 
life  were  not  worth  a  day's  purchase.  Now,  if  you  feel  secure  in 
your  disguise,  all  is  safe.  You  will  have  seen  them  at  their  work ; 
you  will  recognize  their  persons ;  you  can  depose  against  them  at 
the  trial — I  shall  have  time  to  quit  France." 

"  Well,  well !  as  you  please." 

"  Mind,  you  must  wait  in  the  vault  with  them  till  they  sepa- 
rate. We  have  so  planted  your  men  that  whatever  street  each  of 
the  gang  takes  in  going  home,  he  can  be  seized  quietly  and  at 
once.  The  bravest  and  craftiest  of  all,  who,  though  he  has  but 
just  joined,  is  already  their  captain — him,  the  man  I  told  you  of, 
who  lives  in  the  house,  you  must  take  after  his  return,  in  his  bed. 


222  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

It  is  the  sixth  story  to  the  right,  remember :  here  is  the  key  to  his 
door.  He  is  a  giant  in  strength,  and  will  never  be  taken  alive  if 
up  and  armed." 

"  Ah,  I  comprehend  !  Gilbert !  "  (and  Favart  turned  to  one  of 
his  companions  who  had  not  yet  spoken)  "  take  three  men  besides 
yourself,  according  to  the  directions  I  gave  you, — the  porter  will 
admit  you,  that's  arranged.  Make  no  noise.  If  I  don't  return 
by  four  o'clock,  don't  wait  for  me,  but  proceed  at  once.  Look 
well  to  your  primings.  Take  him  alive,  if  possible  ;  at  the  worst, 
dead.  And  now,  mon  ami,  lead  on  !  " 

The  traitor  nodded,  and  walked  slowly  down  the  street.  Favart, 
pausing,  whispered  hastily  to  the  man  whom  he  had  called  Gil- 
bert: 

"  Follow  me  close,  get  to  the  door  of  the  cellar  ;  place  eight 
men  within  hearing  of  my  whistle ;  recollect  the  picklocks,  the 
axes.  If  you  hear  the  whistle,  break  in ;  if  not,  I'm  safe,  and 
the  first  orders  to  seize  the  captain  in  his  room  stand  good." 

So  saying  Favart  strode  after  his  guide.  The  door  of  a  large, 
but  ill-favored-looking  house,  stood  ajar;  they  entered,  passed 
unmolested  through  a  courtyard — descended  some  stairs ;  the 
guide  unlocked  the  door  of  a  cellar,  and  took  a  dark  lantern  from 
under  his  cloak.  As  he  drew  up  the  slide,  the  dim  light  gleamed 
on  barrels  and  wine-casks,  which  appeared  to  fill  up  the  space. 
Rolling  aside  one  of  these,  the  guide  lifted  a  trap-door,  and  low- 
ered his  lantern.  "Enter,"  said  he;  and  the  two  men  disap- 
peared. 

******* 

The  coiners  were  at  their  work.  A  man,  seated  on  a  stool  before 
a  desk,  was  entering  accounts  in  a  large  book.  That  man  was 
William  Gawtrey.  While,  with  the  rapid  precision  of  honest 
mechanics,  the  machinery  of  the  Dark  Trade  went  on  in  its  sev- 
eral departments.  Apart — alone — at  the  foot  of  a  long  table,  sat 
Philip  Morton.  The  truth  had  exceeded  his  darkest  suspicions. 
He  had  consented  to  take  the  oath  not  to  divulge  what  was  to  be 
given  to  his  survey;  and,  when  led  into  that  vault,  the  bandage 
was  taken  from  his  eyes,  it  was  some  minutes  before  he  could 
fully  comprehend  the  desperate  and  criminal  occupations  of  the 
wild  forms  amidst  which  towered  the  burly  stature  of  his  benefac- 
tor. As  the  truth  slowly  grew  upon  him,  he  shrunk  from  the  side 
of  Gawtrey;  but  deep  compassion  for  his  friend's  degradation 
swallowing  up  the  horror  of  the  trade,  he  flung  himself  on  one  of 
the  rude  seats,  and  felt  that  the  bond  between  them  was  indeed 
broken,  and  that  the  next  morning  he  should  be  again  alone  in 
the  world.  Still,  as  the  obscene  jests,  and  fearful  oaths,  that 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  223 

from  time  to  time  rang  through  the  vault,  came  on  his  ear,  he 
cast  his  haughty  eye  in  such  disdain  over  the  groups,  that  Gaw- 
trey,  observing  him,  trembled  for  his  safety  ;  and  nothing  but 
Philip's  sense  of  his  own  impotence,  and  the  brave,  not  timorous, 
desire  not  to  perish  by  such  hands,  kept  silent  the  fiery  denuncia- 
tions of  a  nature,  still  proud  and  honest,  that  quivered  on  his  lips. 
All  present  were  armed  with  pistols  and  cutlasses  except  Morton, 
who  suffered  the  weapons  presented  to  him  to  lie  unheeded  on  the 
table. 

"  Courage,  mesamis!"  said  Gawtrey,  closing  his  book — "  Cour- 
age !  a  few  months  more,  and  we  shall  have  made  enough  to 
retire  upon,  and  enjoy  ourselves  for  the  rest  of  the  days.  Where 
isBirnie?" 

"Did  he  not  tell  you?"  said  one  of  the  artisans,  looking  up. 
* '  He  has  found  out  the  cleverest  hand  in  France  ;  the  very  fellow 
who  helped  Bouchard  in  all  his  five-franc  pieces.  He  has  promised 
to  bring  him  to-night." 

"Ay,  I  remember,"  returned  Gawtrey,  "  he  told  me  this  morn- 
ing,— he  is  a  famous  decoy !  " 

"I  think  so,  indeed!"  quoth  a  coiner;  "  for  he  caught  you, 
the  best  head  to  our  hands  that  ever  les  industriels  were  blessed 
with — sacre  fichtre  /  " 

"  Flatterer  !  "  said  Gawtrey,  coming  from  the  desk  to  the  table, 
and  pouring  out  wine  from  one  of  the  bottles  into  a  huge  flagon. 

"  To  your  healths !  " 

Here  the  door  slided  back,  and  Birnie  glided  in. 

"Where  is  your  booty,  mon  brave?"  said  Gawtrey.  "We 
only  coin  money ;  you  coin  men,  stamp  with  your  own  seal,  and 
send  them  current  to  the  devil !  " 

The  coiners,  who  liked  Birnie's  ability  (for  the  ci-devant  en- 
graver was  of  admirable  skill  in  their  craft),  but  who  hated  his 
joyless  manners,  laughed  at  this  taunt,  which  Birnie  did  not  seem 
to  heed,  except  by  a  malignant  gleam  of  his  dead  eye. 

"If  you  mean  the  celebrated  coiner,  Jacques  Giraumont,  he 
waits  without.  You  know  our  rules — I  cannot  admit  him  without 
leave." 

"  Bon!  we  give  it, — eh,  messieurs?  "  said  Gawtrey. 

"Ay,  ay,"  cried  several  voices.  "He  knows  the  oath,  and 
will  hear  the  penalty." 

"Yes,  he  knows  the  oath,"  replied  Birnie,  and  glided  back. 

In  a  moment  more  he  returned  with  a  small  man  in  a  mechan- 
ic's blouse.  The  new-comer  wore  the  republican  beard  and 
moustache,  of  a  sandy  gray;  his  hair  was  the  same  color;  ancl  a 


224 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 


black  patch  over  one  eye  increased  the  ill-favored  appearance  of 
his  features. 

"  Diable  !  Monsieur  Giraumont !  but  you  are  more  like  Vulcan 
than  Adonis  ! ' '  said  Gawtrey. 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  Vulcan,  but  I  know  how  to 
make  five-franc  pieces,"  said  Monsieur  Giraumont  doggedly. 

' '  Are  you  poor  ? ' ' 

"  As  a  church  mouse !  The  only  thing  belonging  to  a  church, 
since  the  Bourbons  came  back,  that  is  poor  !  " 

At  this  sally,  the  coiners  who  had  gathered  round  the  table, 
uttered  the  shout  with  which,  in  all  circumstances,  Frenchmen 
receive  a  bon  mot. 

11  Humph  !  "  said  Gawtrey.  "Who  responds,  with  his  own  life, 
for  your  fidelity?" 

"I,"  said  Birnie. 

"Administer  the  oath  to  him." 

Suddenly  four  men  advanced,  seized  the  visitor,  and  bore  him 
from  the  vault  into  another  one  within.  After  a  few  moments  they 
returned. 

"  He  has  taken  the  oath  and  heard  the  penalty." 

"  Death  to  yourself,  your  wife,  your  son,  and  your  grandson,  if 
you  betray  us !  " 

"I  have  neither  son  nor  grandson;  as  for  my  wife,  Monsieur 
le  Capitane,  you  offer  a  bribe  instead  of  a  threat  when  you  talk  of 
her  death  !  " 

"  Sacre  !  but  you  will  be  an  addition  to  our  circle,  mon  brave  !  " 
said  Gawtrey,  laughing ;  while  again  the  grim  circle  shouted 
applause. 

"  But  I  suppose  you  care  for  your  own  life?  " 

"  Otherwise  I  should  have  preferred  starving  to  coming  here," 
answered  the  laconic  neophyte. 

"I  have  done  with  you.     Your  health  !  " 

On  this  the  coiners  gathered  round  Monsieur  Giraumont,  shook 
him  by  the  hand,  and  commenced  many  questions  with  a  view  to 
ascertain  his  skill. 

' '  Show  me  your  coinage  first ;  I  see  you  use  both  the  die  and 
the  furnace.  Hem  !  this  piece  is  not  bad ;  you  have  struck  it 
from  an  iron  die  ?  right — it  makes  the  impression  sharper  than 
plaster  of  Paris.  But  you  take  the  poorest  and  the  most  danger- 
ous part  of  the  trade  in  taking  the  Home  Market.  I  can  put  you 
in  a  way  to  make  ten  times  as  much — and  with  safety  !  Look  at 
this!"  and  Monsieur  Giraumont  took  a  forged  Spanish  dollar 
from  his  pocket,  so  skilfully  manufactured  that  the  connoisseurs 
were  lost  in  admiration;  "you  may  pass  thousands  of  these  all 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  225 

over  Europe,  except  France,  and  who  is  ever  to  detect  you  ?  But 
it  will  require  better  machinery  than  you  have  here." 

Thus  conversing,  Monsieur  Giraumont  did  not  perceive  that 
Mr.  Gawtrey  had  been  examining  him  very  curiously  and  minutely. 
But  Birnie  had  noted  their  chiefs  attention,  and  once  attempted 
to  join  his  new  ally,  when  Gawtrey  laid  his  hand  on  his  shoulder, 
and  stopped  him. 

"  Do  not  speak  to  your  friend  till  I  bid  you,  or — "  he  stopped 
short,  and  touched  his  pistols. 

Birnie  grew  a  shade  more  pale,  but  replied  with  his  usual 
sneer : 

"Suspicious!  well,  so  much  the  better  !  "  and  seating  himself 
carelessly  at  the  table,  lighted  his  pipe. 

"And  now,  Monsieur  Giraumont,"  said  Gawtrey,  as  he  took 
the  head  of  the  table,  "  come  to  my  right  hand.  A  half  holiday 
in  your  honor.  Clear  these  infernal  instruments ;  and  more  wine, 
mes  amis  ! ' ' 

The  party  arranged  themselves  at  the  table.  Among  the  des- 
perate there  is  almost  invariably  a  tendency  to  mirth.  A  solitary 
ruffian,  indeed,  is  moody,  but  a  gang  of  ruffians  are  jovial.  The 
coiners  talked  and  laughed  loud.  Mr.  Birnie,  from  his  dogged 
silence,  seemed  apart  from  the  rest,  though  in  the  centre.  For  in 
a  noisy  circle,  a  silent  tongue  builds  a  wall  round  its  owner.  But 
that  respectable  personage  kept  his  furtive  watch  upon  Giraumont 
and  Gawtrey,  who  appeared  talking  together  very  amicably.  The 
younger  novice  of  that  night,  equally  silent,  seated  towards  the 
bottom  of  the  table,  was  not  less  watchful  than  Birnie.  An  uneasy, 
undefinable  foreboding  had  come  over  him  since  the  entrance  of 
Monsieur  Giraumont ;  this  had  been  increased  by  the  manner  of 
Mr.  Gawtrey.  His  faculty  of  observation,  which  was  very  acute, 
had  detected  something  false  in  the  chief's  blandness  to  their 
guest;  something  dangerous  in  the  glittering  eye  that  Gawtrey 
ever,  as  he  spoke  to  Giraumont,  bent  on  that  person's  lips  as  he 
listened  to  his  reply.  For,  whenever  William  Gawtrey  suspected 
a  man,  he  watched  not  his  eyes  but  his  lips. 

Waked  from  his  scornful  reverie,  a  strange  spell  chained  Mor- 
ton's attention  to  the  chief  and  the  guest,  and  he  bent  forward, 
with  parted  mouth  and  straining  ear,  to  catch  their  conversation. 

"  It  seems  to  me  a  little  strange,"  said  Mr.  Gawtrey,  raising 
his  voice  so  as  to  be  heard  by  the  party,  "  that  a  coiner  so  dexter- 
ous as  Monsieur  Giraumont  should  not  be  known  to  any  of  us 
except  our  friend  Birnie." 

"  Not  at  all,"  replied  Giraumont :   "I  worked  only  with  Bouch- 


226  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

ard  and  two  others  ;  since  sent  to  the  galleys.  We  were  but  a  small 
fraternity  —  everything  has  its  commencement." 

"  C^  est  juste  :  buvez  done,  cher  ami  !  "  * 

The  wine  circulated  :  Gawtrey  began  again. 

"You  have  had  a  bad  accident,  seemingly,  Monsieur  Girau- 
mont  ;  how  did  you  lose  your  eye  ?  " 

"In  a  scuffle  with  the  gens  d'armes  the  night  Bouchard  was 
taken  and  I  escaped  :  such  misfortunes  are  on  the  cards." 

"  C'  est  juste  :  buvez  done,  Monsieur  Giraumont  .'  "f 

Again  there  was  a  pause,  and  again  Gawtrey's  deep  voice  was 
heard. 

"  You  wear  a  wig,  I  think,  Monsieur  Giraumont?  To  judge 
by  your  eye-lashes  your  own  hair  has  been  a  handsomer  color.  '  ' 

"  We  seek  disguise  not  beauty,  my  host!  and  the  police  have 
sharp  eyes.  '  ' 

"  C'esf  juste,  buvez  done,  vieux  Renard  !  When  did  we  two 
meet  last?"J 

"  Never,  that  I  know  of  !  " 

"  Ce    n'est   pas    vrai!    buvez    done,  MONSIEUR   FAV- 


At  the  sound  of  that  name  the  company  started  in  dismay  and 
confusion,  and  the  police  officer,  forgetting  himself  for  the 
moment,  sprung  from  his  seat,  and  put  his  right  hand  into  his 
blouse. 

"  Ho,  there  !  Treason  !  "  cried  Gawtrey,  in  a  voice  of  thunder  ; 
and  he  caught  the  unhappy  man  by  the  throat. 

It  was  the  work  of  a  moment.  Morton,  where  he  sat,  beheld 
a  struggle  —  he  heard  a  death-cry.  He  saw  the  huge  form  of  the 
master-coiner  rising  above  all  the  rest,  as  cutlasses  gleamed  and 
eyes  sparkled  round.  He  saw  the  quivering  and  powerless  frame 
of  the  unhappy  guest  raised  aloft  in  those  mighty  arms,  and  pres- 
ently it  was  hurled  along  the  table  —  bottles  crashing  —  the  board 
shaking  beneath  its  weight  —  and  lay  before  the  very  eyes  of  Mor- 
ton, a  distorted  and  lifeless  mass.  At  the  same  instant,  Gawtrey 
sprang  upon  the  table,  his  black  frown  singling  out  from  the  group 
the  ashen,  cadaverous  face  of  the  shrinking  traitor.  Birnie  had 
darted  from  the  table  :  he  was  half  way  towards  the  sliding  door  ; 
his  face,  turned  over  his  shoulder,  met  the  eyes  of  the  chief. 

"Devil  !  "  shouted  Gawtrey,  in  his  terrible  voice,  which  the 
echoes  of  the  vault  gave  back  from  side  to  side  ;  "  did  I  not  give 
thee  up  my  soul  that  thou  mightest  not  compass  my  death  ?  Hark 

*  That's  right  :  drink,  then,  dear  friend. 

{That's  right  :  drink,  then,  Monsieur  Giraumont 
That's  right  :  drink,  then,  old  fox. 
£  That's  not  true  ;  drink,  then,  Monsieur  Favart, 


WIGHT  AND  MORN  UN  ^.  227 

ye  !  thus  die  my  slavery  and  all  our  secrets  ! ' '  The  explosion  of 
his  pistol  half  swallowed  up  the  last  word,  and  with  a  single 
groan  the  traitor  fell  on  the  floor,  pierced  through  the  brain, — 
then  there  was  a  dead  and  grim  hush  as  the  smoke  rolled  slowly 
along  the  roof  of  the  dreary  vault. 

Morton  sank  back  on  his  seat,  and  covered  his  face  with  his 
hands.  The  last  seal  on  the  fate  of  THE  MAN  OF  CRIME  was  set ; 
the  last  wave  in  the  terrible  and  mysterious  tide  of  his  destiny 
had  dashed  on  his  soul  to  the  shore  whence  there  is  no  return. 
Vain,  now  and  henceforth,  the  humor,  the  sentiment,  the  kindly 
impulse,  the  social  instincts  which  had  invested  that  stalwart  shape 
with  dangerous  fascination,  which  had  implied  the  hope  of  ulti- 
mate repentance,  of  redemption  even  in  this  world.  The  HOUR 
and  the  CIRCUMSTANCE  had  seized  their  prey ;  and  the  self-defence, 
which  a  lawless  career  rendered  a  necessity,  left  the  eternal  die  of 
blood  upon  his  doom  ! 

"  Friends,  I  have  saved  you,"  said  Gawtrey,  slowly  gazing  on 
the  corpse  of  his  second  victim,  while  he  returned  the  pistol  to 
his  belt:  "I  have  not  quailed  before  this  man's  eye  (and  he 
spurned  the  clay  of  the  officer  as  he  spoke  with  a  revengeful 
scorn)  without  treasuring  up  its  aspect  in  my  heart  of  hearts.  I 
knew  him  when  he  entered — knew  him  through  his  disguise  ;  yet, 
faith,  it  was  a  clever  one  !  Turn  up  his  face  and  gaze  on  him 
now;  he  will  never  terrify  us  again,  unless  there  be  truth  in 
ghosts  !" 

Murmuring  and  tremulous  the  coiners  scrambled  on  the  table 
and  examined  the  dead  man.  From  this  task  Gawtrey  interrupted 
them,  for  his  quick  eye  detected,  with  the  pistols  under  the  police- 
man's blouse,  a  whistle  of  metal  of  curious  construction,  and  he 
conjectured  at  once  that  danger  was  yet  at  hand. 

"  I  have  saved  you,  I  say,  but  only  for  the  hour.  This  deed 
cannot  sleep — see,  he.  had  help  within  call.  The  police  know 
where  to  look  for  their  comrade — we  are  dispersed.  Each  for 
himself.  Quick,  divide  the  spoils  !  Sauve  qui  pent !" 

Then  Morton  heard  where  he  sat,  his  hands  still  clasped  before 
his  face,  a  confused  hubbub  of  voices,  the  jingle  of  money,  the 
scrambling  of  feet,  the  creaking  of  doors, — all  was  silent ! 

A  strong  grasp  drew  his  hands  from  his  eyes. 

"Your  first  scene  of  life  against  life,"  said  Gawtrey's  voice, 
which  seemed  fearfully  changed  to  the  ear  that  heard  it.  "  Bah  ! 
what  would  you  think  of  a  battle  ?  Come  to  our  eyrie  :  the  car- 
casses are  gone." 

Morton  looked  fearfully  round  the  vault.  He  and  Gawtrey 
were  alone.  His  eyes  sought  the  places  where  the  dead  had  lain 


228  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

they  were  removed ;  no  vestige  of  the  deeds,  not  even  a  drop 

of  blood. 

"  Come,  take  up  your  cutlass,  come  !  "  repeated  the  voice  of 
the  chief,  as  with  his  dim  lantern,  now  the  sole  light  of  the  vault, 
he  stood  in  the  shadow  of  the  doorway. 

Morton  rose,  took  up  the  weapon  mechanically,  and  followed 
that  terrible  guide,  mute  and  unconscious,  as  a  Soul  follows  a 
Dream  through  the  House  of  Sleep ! 

CHAPTER  X. 

"  Sleep  no  more." — Macbeth. 

AFTER  winding  through  gloomy  and  labyrinthine  passages, 
which  conducted  to  a  different  range  of  cellars  from  those  entered 
by  the  unfortunate  Favart,  Gawtrey  emerged  at  the  foot  of  a 
flight  of  stairs,  which,  dark,  narrow,  and  in  many  places  broken, 
•had  been  probably  appropriated  to  servants  of  the  house  in  its 
days  of  palmier  glory.  By  these  steps  the  pair  regained  their 
attic.  Gawtrey  placed  the  lantern  on  the  table  and  seated  him- 
self in  silence.  Morton,  who  had  recovered  his  self-possession 
and  formed  his  resolution,  gazed  on  him  for  some  moments 
equally  taciturn ;  at  length  he  spoke : 

"Gawtrey  !  " 

"  I  bade  you  not  call  me  by  that  name,"  said  the  coiner  ;  for 
we  need  scarcely  say  that  in  his  new  trade  he  had  assumed  a  new 
appellation. 

"It  is  the  least  guilty  one  by  which  I  have  known  you," 
returned  Morton,  firmly.  "It  is  for  the  last  time  I  call  you  by  it ! 
I  demanded  to  see  by  what  means  one  to  whom  I  had  entrusted 
my  fate  supported  himself.  I  have  seen,"  continued  the  young 
man  still  firmly,  but  with  a  livid  cheek  and  lip,  "and  the  tie 
between  us  is  rent  forever.  Interrupt  me  not !  it  is  not  for  me  to 
blame  you.  I  have  eaten  of  your  bread  and  drunk  of  your  cup. 
Confiding  in  you  too  blindly,  and  believing  that  you  were  at 
least  free  from  those  dark  and  terrible  crimes  for  which  there  is 
no  expiation,  at  least  in  this  life — my  conscience  seared  by  dis- 
tress, my  very  soul  made  dormant  by  despair — I  surrendered  my- 
self to  one  leading  a  career  equivocal,  suspicious,  dishonorable 
perhaps,  but  still  not,  as  I  believed,  of  atrocity  and  bloodshed.  I 
wake  at  the  brink  of  the  abyss ;  my  mother's  hand  beckons  to  me 
from  the  grave  ;  I  think  I  hear  her  voice  while  I  address  you ;  I 
recede  while  it  is  yet  time ;  we  part,  and  forever  !  " 

Gawtrey,  whose  stormy  passion  was  still  deep  upon  his  soul, 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  22Q 

had  listened  hitherto  in  sullen  and  dogged  silence,  with  a  gloomy 
frown  on  his  knitted  brow ;  he  now  rose  with  an  oath  : 

"  Part  !  that  I  may  let  loose  on  the  world  a  new  traitor  !  Part ! 
when  you  have  seen  me  fresh  from  an  act  that,  once  whispered, 
gives  me  to  the  guillotine  !  Part — never  !  at  least  alive  !  " 

"  I  have  said  it,"  said  Morton,  folding  his  arms  calmly ;  "I 
say  it  to  your  face,  though  I  might  part  from  you  in  secret. 
Frown  not  on  me,  man  of  blood  !  I  am  fearless  as  yourself !  In 
another  minute  I  am  gone." 

"  Ah  !  is  it  so?"  said  Gawtrey;  and  glancing  round  the 
room,  which  contained  two  doors,  the  one,  concealed  by  the 
draperies  of  a  bed,  communicating  with  the  stairs  by  which  they 
had  entered,  the  other  with  the  landing  of  the  principal  and  com- 
mon flight :  he  turned  to  the  former,  within  his  reach,  which  he 
locked,  and  put  the  key  in  his  pocket  and  then,  throwing  across 
the  latter  a  heavy  swing  bar,  which  fell  into  its  socket  with  a  harsh 
noise,  before  the  threshold  he  placed  his  vast  bulk,  and  burst  into 
his  loud,  fierce  laugh.  "  Ho  !  ho  !  slave  and  fool,  once  mine,  you 
were  mine  body  and  soul  forever  !  " 

"  Tempter,  I  defy  you  !  stand  back !  "  And,  firm  and  daunt- 
less, Morton  laid  his  hand  on  the  giant's  vest. 

Gawtrey  seemed  more  astonished  than  enraged.  He  looked 
hard  at  his  daring  associate,  on  whose  lip  the  down  was  yet 
scarcely  dark. 

"  Boy,"  said  he,  "off!  do  not  rouse  the  devil  in  me  again ! 
1  could  crush  you  with  a  hug." 

"  My  soul  supports  my  body,  and  I  am  armed,"  said  Morton, 
laying  hand  on  his  cutlass.  "  But  you  dare  not  harm  me,  nor  I 
you ;  blood-stained  as  you  are,  you  gave  me  shelter  and  bread ; 
but  accuse  me  not  that  I  will  save  my  soul  while  it  is  yet  time  ! 
Shall  my  mother  have  blessed  me  in  vain  upon  her  death-bed?  " 

Gawtrey  drew  back,  and  Morton,  by  a  sudden  impulse,  grasped 
his  hand. 

"Oh!  hear  me — hear  me!"  he  cried,  with  great  emotion. 
"  Abandon  this  horrible  career;  you  have  been  decoyed  and  be- 
trayed to  it  by  one  who  can  deceive  or  terrify  you  no  more ! 
Abandon  it,  and  I  will  never  desert  you.  For  her  sake — for  your 
Fanny's  sake — pause,  like  me,  before  the  gulf  swallow  us.  Let 
us  fly  ! — far  to  the  new  World — to  any  land  where  our  thews  and 
sinews,  our  stout  hands  and  hearts,  can  find  an  honest  mart. 
Men,  desperate  as  we  are,  have  yet  risen  by  honest  means. 
Take  her,  your  orphan,  with  us.  We  will  work  for  her,  both  of 
us.  Gawtrey !  hear  me.  It  is  not  my  voice  that  speaks  to  you — 
jt  is  your  good  angel's !  " 


2^0  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Gawtrey  fell  back  against  the  wall,  and  his  chest  heaved. 

"Morton,"  he  said,  with  choked  and  tremulous  accents,  "  go 
now;  leave  me  to  my  fate  !  I  have  sinned  against  you — shame- 
fully sinned.  It  seemed  to  me  so  sweet  to  have  a  friend ;  in  your 
youth  and  character  of  mind  there  was  so  much  about  which  the 
tough  strings  of  my  heart  wound  themselves,  that  I  could  not  bear 
to  lose  you — to  suffer  you  to  know  me  for  what  I  was.  I  blinded — 
I  deceived  you  as  to  my  past  deeds ;  that  was  base  in  me :  but  I 
swore  to  my  own  heart  to  keep  you  unexposed  to  every  danger, 
and  free  from  every  vice  that  darkened  my  own  path.  I  kept  that 
oath  till  this  night,  when,  seeing  that  you  began  to  recoil  from 
me,  and  dreading  that  you  should  desert  me,  I  thought  to  bind 
you  to  me  forever  by  implicating  you  in  this  fellowship  of  crime. 
I  am  punished,  and  justly.  Go,  I  repeat ;  leave  me  to  the  fate 
that  strides  nearer  and  nearer  to  me  day  by  day.  You  are  a  boy 
still,  I  am  no  longer  young.  Habit  is  a  second  nature.  Still — still  I 
could  repent.  I  could  begin  life  again :  But  repose ! — to  look 
back — to  remember — to  be  haunted  night  and  day  with  deeds  that 
shall  meet  me  bodily  and  face  to  face  on  the  last  day " 

"  Add  not  to  the  spectres  !  Come — fly  this  night — this  hour !  " 

Gawtrey  paused,  irresolute  and  wavering,  when  at  that  moment 
he  heard  steps  on  the  stairs  below.  He  started — as  starts  the 
boar  caught  in  his  lair — and  listened,  pale  and  breathless. 

"  Hush !  they  are  on  us !  they  come  !  "  as  he  whispered,  the  key 
from  without  turned  in  the  wards — the  door  shook.  ' '  Soft !  the 
bar  preserves  us  both — this  way."  And  the  coiner  crept  to  the 
door  of  the  private  stairs.  He  unlocked  and  opened  it  cautiously. 
A  man  sprang  through  the  aperture  : 

"Yield  !  you  are  my  prisoner  !  " 

"  Never  !  "  cried  Gawtrey,  hurling  back  the  intruder,  and  clap- 
ping to  the  door,  though  other  and  stout  men  were  pressing 
against  it  with  all  their  power. 

"  Ho  !  ho  !     Who  shall  open  the  tiger's  cage?  " 

At  both  doors  now  were  heard  the  sounds  of  voices.  "  Open  in 
the  king's  name,  or  expect  no  mercy !  " 

"Hist!"  said  Gawtrey.  "One  way  yet — the  window — the 
rope." 

Morton  opened  the  casement — Gawtrey  uncoiled  the  rope.  The 
dawn  was  breaking ;  it  was  light  in  the  streets,  but  all  seemed 
quiet  without.  The  doors  reeled  and  shook  beneath  the  pressure 
of  the  pursuers.  Gawtrey  flung  the  rope  across  the  street  to  the 
opposite  parapet ;  after  two  or  three  efforts,  the  grappling-hook 
caught  firm  hold — the  perilous  path  was  made. 

"On!    quick!    loiter  not!"  whispered  Gawtrey:    "You  are 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  231 

active — it  seems  more  dangerous  than  it  is;  cling  with  both  hands 
— shut  your  eyes.  When  on  the  other  side — you  see  the  window 
of  Birnie's  room, — enter  it,  descend  the  stairs,  let  yourself  out, 
and  you  are  safe. ' ' 

"  Go  first ;  "  said  Morton,  in  the  same  tone:  "  I  will  not  leave 
you  now  :  you  will  be  longer  getting  across  than  I  shall.  I  will 
keep  guard  till  you  are  over. ' ' 

"  Hark  !  hark  !  are  you  mad?  You  keep  guard  !  What  is  your 
strength  to  mine  ?  Twenty  men  shall  not  move  that  door,  while 
my  weight  is  against  it.  Quick,  or  you  destroy  us  both  !  Besides, 
you  will  hold  the  rope  for  me ;  it  may  not  be  strong  enough  for 
my  bulk  of  itself.  Stay  !  Stay  one  moment.  If  you  escape,  and 
I  fall — Fanny — my  father,  he  will  take  care  of  her, — you  remem- 
ber— thanks !  Forgive  me  all !  Go  ;  that's  right !  " 

With  a  firm  pulse,  Morton  threw  himself  on  that  dreadful 
bridge;  it  swung  and  crackled  at  his  weight.  Shifting  his  grasp 
rapidly,  holding  his  breath,  with  set  teeth,  with  closed  eyes,  he 
moved  on ;  he  gained  the  parapet ;  he  stood  safe  on  the  opposite 
side.  And  now,  straining  his  eyes  across,  he  saw  through  the 
open  casement  into  the  chamber  he  had  just  quitted.  Gawtrey 
was  still  standing  against  the  door  to  the  principal  staircase,  for 
that  of  the  two  was  the  weaker  and  more  assailed.  Presently  the 
explosion  of  a  firearm  was  heard ;  they  had  shot  through  the 
panel.  Gawtrey  seemed  wounded,  for  he  staggered  forward,  and 
uttered  a  fierce  cry ;  a  moment  more,  and  he  gained  the  window 
— he  seized  the  rope — he  hung  over  the  tremendous  depth !  Mor- 
ton knelt  by  the  parapet,  holding  the  grappling  hook  in  its  place, 
with  convulsive  grasp,  and  fixing  his  eyes,  bloodshot  with  fear 
and  suspense,  on  the  huge  bulk  that  clung  for  life  to  that  slender 
cord  ! 

"  Le  voild  !  le  voild  !  "  cried  a  voice  from  the  opposite  side. 
Morton  raised  his  gaze  from  Gawtrey ;  the  casement  was  darkened 
by  the  forms  of  the  pursuers — they  had  burst  into  the  room ;  an  offi- 
cer sprung  upon  the  parapet,  and  Gawtrey,  now  aware  of  his  dan- 
ger, opened  his  eyes,  and,  as  he  moved  on,  glared  upon  the  foe. 
The  policeman  deliberately  raised  his  pistol.  Gawtrey  arrested 
himself;  from  a  wound  in  his  side  the  blood  trickled  slowly  and 
darkly  down,  drop  by  drop,  upon  the  stones  below ;  even  the  offi- 
cers of  law  shuddered  as  they  eyed  him — his  hair  bristling — his 
cheek  white — his  lips  drawn  convulsively  from  his  teeth,  and  his 
eye  glaring  from  beneath  the  frown  of  agony  and  menace  in  which 
yet  spoke  the  indomitable  power  and  fierceness  of  the  man.  His 
look,  so  fixed,  so  intense,  so  stern,  awed  the  policeman;  his  hand 
trembled  as  he  fired,  and  the  bal1  struck  the  parapet  an  inch  below 


232 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 


the  spot  where  Morton  knelt.  An  indistinct,  wild,  gurgling  sound 

half-laugh,  half-yell — of  scorn  and  glee,  broke  from  Gawtrey's 

lips.  He  swung  himself  on — near — near — nearer — a  yard  from 
the  parapet. 

"You  are  saved  !  "  cried  Morton;  when  at  that  moment  a  vol- 
ley burst  from  the  fatal  casement — the  smoke  rolled  over  both  the 
fugitives — a  groan,  or  rather  howl,  of  rage,  and  despair,  and 
agony,  appalled  even  the  hardiest  on  whose  ear  it  came.  Morton 
sprung  to  his  feet  and  looked  below.  He  saw  on  the  rugged  stones, 
far  down,  a  dark,  formless,  motionless  mass.  The  strong  man  of 
passion  and  levity — the  giant  who  had  played  with  life  and  soul, 
as  an  infant  with  the  baubles  that  it  prizes  and  breaks — was  what 
Caesar  and  the  leper  alike  are,  when  the  clay  is  without  God's 
breath  ;  what  glory,  genius,  power,  and  beauty,  would  be  forever 
and  forever,  if  there  were  no  God  ! 

"There  is  another  !  "  cried  the  voice  of  one  of  the  pursuers. 
"Fire!" 

"Poor  Gawtrey  !  "  muttered  Philip,  "I  will  fulfil  your  last 
wish; ''  and  scarcely  conscious  of  the  bullet  that  whistled  by  him, 
he  disappeared  behind  the  parapet. 

CHAPTER  XI. 

"  Gently  moved 
By  the  soft  wind  of  whispering  silks." — DECKER. 

THE  reader  may  remember  that  while  Monsieur  Favart  and  Mr. 
Birnie  were  holding  commune  in  the  lane,  the  sounds  of  festivity 
were  heard  from  a  house  in  the  adjoining  street.  To  that  house 
we  are  now  summoned. 

At  Paris  the  gaiety  of  balls,  or  soirtes,  are,  I  believe,  very  rare 
in  that  period  of  the  year  in  which  they  are  most  frequent  in  Lon- 
don. The  entertainment  now  given  was  in  honor  of  a  christen- 
ing ;  the  lady  who  gave  it,  a  relation  of  the  new-born. 

Madame  de  Merville  was  a  young  widow ;  even  before  her  mar- 
riage she  had  been  distinguished  in  literature ;  she  had  written 
poems  of  more  than  common  excellence;  and  being  handsome, 
of  good  family,  and  large  fortune,  her  talents  made  her  an  object 
of  more  interest  than  they  might  otherwise  have  done.  Her 
poetry  showed  great  sensibility  and  tenderness.  If  poetry  be  any 
index  to  the  heart,  you  would  have  thought  her  one  to  love  truly 
and  deeply.  Nevertheless,  since  she  married — as  girls  in  France 
do — not  to  please  herself,  but  her  parents,  she  made  a  mariage  df 
convenance.  Monsieur  de  Merville  was  a  sober,  sensible  man,  past 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  233 

middle  age.  Not  being  fond  of  poetry,  and  by  no  means  covet- 
ing a  professional  author  for  his  wife,  he  had,  during  their  union, 
which  lasted  four  years,  discouraged  his  wife's  liaison  with  Apollo. 
But  her  mind,  active  and  ardent,  did  not  the  less  prey  upon  itself. 
At  the  age  of  four-and-twenty  she  became  a  widow,  with  an 
income  large  even  in  England  for  a  single  woman,  and  at  Paris 
constituting  no  ordinary  fortune.  Madame  de  Merville,  however, 
though  a  person  of  elegant  taste,  was  neither  ostentatious  nor  self- 
ish ;  she  had  no  children,  and  she  lived  quietly  in  apartments, 
handsome,  indeed,  but  not  more  than  adequate  to  the  small  estab- 
lishment which — where,  as  on  the  Continent,  the  costly  conveni- 
ence of  an  entire  house  is  not  usually  incurred — sufficed  for  her 
retinue.  She  devoted  at  least  half  her  income,  which  was  entirely 
at  her  own  disposal,  partly  to  the  aid  of  her  own  relations,  who 
were  not  rich,  and  partly  to  the  encouragement  of  the  literature 
she  cultivated.  Although  she  shrunk  from  the  ordeal  of  publica- 
tion, her  poems  and  sketches  of  romance  were  read  to  her  own 
friends,  and  possessed  an  eloquence  seldom  accompanied  with  so 
much  modesty.  Thus,  her  reputation,  though  not  blown  about 
the  winds,  was  high  in  her  own  circle,  and  her  position  in  fashion 
and  in  fortune  made  her  looked  up  to  by  her  relations  as  the  head 
of  her  family ;  they  regarded  her  as  femme  superieure,  and  her 
advice  with  them  was  equivalent  to  a  command.  Eugenie  de 
Merville  was  a  strange  mixture  of  qualities  at  once  feminine  and 
masculine.  On  the  one  hand,  she  had  a  strong  will,  independent 
views,  some  contempt  for  the  world,  and  followed  her  own  incli- 
nations without  servility  to  the  opinion  of  others ;  on  the  other 
hand,  she  was  susceptible,  romantic,  of  a  sweet,  affectionate,  kind 
disposition.  Her  visit  to  M.  Love,  however  indiscreet,  was  not 
less  in  accordance  with  her  character  than  her  charity  to  the 
mechanic's  wife ;  masculine  and  careless  where  an  eccentric 
thing  was  to  be  done — curiosity  satisfied,  or  some  object  in  female 
diplomacy  achieved — womanly,  delicate,  and  gentle,  the  instant 
her  benevolence  was  appealed  to  or  her  heart  touched.  She  had 
now  been  three  years  a  widow,  and  was  consequently  at  the  age 
of  twenty-seven.  Despite  the  tenderness  of  her  poetry  and  her 
character,  her  reputation  was  unblemished.  She  had  never  been 
in  love.  People  who  are  much  occupied  do  not  fall  in  love 
easily ;  besides,  Madame  de  Merville  was  refining,  exacting,  and 
wished  to  find  heroes  where  she  only  met  handsome  dandies  or 
ugly  authors.  Moreover,  Eugenie  was  both  a  vain  and  a  proud 
person — vain  of  her  celebrity,  and  proud  of  her  birth.  She  was 
one  whose  goodness  of  heart  made  her  always  active  in  promoting 
the  happiness  of  others.  She  was  not  only  generous  and  chart- 


234  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

table,  but  willing  to  serve  people  by  good  offices  as  well  as  money. 
Everybody  loved  her.  The  new-born  infant,  to  whose  addition 
to  the  Christian  community  the  fete  of  this  night  was  dedicated, 
was  the  pledge  of  an  union  which  Madame  de  Merville  had  man- 
aged to  effect  between  two  young  persons,  first  cousins  to  each 
other,  and  related  to  herself.  There  had  been  scruples  of  parents 
to  remove ;  money  matters  to  adjust — Eugenie  had  smoothed  all. 
The  husband  and  wife,  still  lovers,  looked  up  to  her  as  the  author, 
under  Heaven,  of  their  happiness. 

The  gala  of  that  night  had  been,  therefore,  of  a  nature  more 
than  usually  pleasurable,  and  the  mirth  did  not  sound  hollow,  but 
rung  from  the  heart.  Yet,  as  Eugenie  from  time  to  time  contem- 
plated the  young  couple,  whose  eyes  ever  sought  each  other — so 
fair,  so  tender,  and  so  joyous  as  they  seemed — a  melancholy 
shadow  darkened  her  brow,  and  she  sighed  involuntarily.  Once 
the  young  wife,  Madame  d'Anville,  approaching  her  timidly, 
said: 

"Ah  !  my  sweet  cousin,  when  shall  we  see  you  as  happy  as 
ourselves?  There  is  such  happiness,"  she  added,  innocently  and 
with  a  blush,  "  in  being  a  mother  !  That  little  life  all  one's  own 
— it  is  something  to  think  of  every  hour  !  " 

"Perhaps,"  said  Eugenie,  smiling,  and  seeking  to  turn  the 
conversation  from  a  subject  that  touched  too  nearly  upon  feelings 
and  thoughts  her  pride  did  not  wish  to  reveal — ' '  perhaps,  it  is 
you  then  who  have  made  our  cousin,  poor  Monsieur  de  Vaude- 
mont,  so  determined  to  marry  ?  Pray,  be  more  cautious  with 
him.  How  difficult  I  have  found  it  to  prevent  his  bringing  into 
our  family  some  one  to  make  us  all  ridiculous  !  " 

"  True,"  said  Madame  d'Anville,  laughing.  "  But  then,  the 
Vicomte  is  so  poor  and  in  debt.  He  would  fall  in  love,  not  with 
the  demoiselle  but  the  dower.  Apropos  of  that,  how  cleverly 
you  took  advantage  of  his  boastful  confession  to  break  off  his 
liaisons  with  that  bureau  de  mariage." 

' '  Yes  ;  I  congratulate  myself  on  that  manoeuvre.  Unpleasant 
as  it  was  to  go  to  such  a  place  (for,  of  course,  I  could  not  send  for 
Monsieur  Love  here,)  it  would  have  been  still  more  unpleasant  to 
have  received  such  a  Madame  de  Vaudemont  as  our  cousin  would 
have  presented  to  us.  Only  think, — he  was  the  rival  of  an  epi- 
cier  !  I  heard  that  there  was  some  curious  denouement  to  the 
farce  of  that  establishment ;  but  I  could  never  get  from  Vaude- 
oiont  the  particulars.  He  was  ashamed  of  them,  I  fancy." 

"  What  droll  professions  there  are  in  Paris  !  "  said  Madame 
d'Anville;  "as  if  people  could  not  marry  without  going  to  an 
office  for  a  spouse  as  we  go  for  a  servant !  And  so  the  establish- 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  235 

ment  is  broken  up  ?  And  you  never  again  saw  that  dark,  wild- 
looking  boy  who  so  struck  your  fancy,  that  you  have  taken  him  as 
the  original  for  the  Murillo  sketch  of  the  youth  in  that  charming 
tale  you  read  to  us  the  other  evening.  Ah  !  cousin,  I  think  you 
were  a  little  taken  with  him ;  the  bureau  de  mariage  had  its 
allurements  for  you  as  well  as  for  our  poor  cousin  !  "  The  young 
mother  said  this  laughingly  and  carelessly. 

"  Pooh  !  "  returned  Madame  de  Merville,  laughing  also;  but  a 
slight  blush  broke  over  her  natural  paleness.  "  But  apropos  of 
the  Vicomte.  You  know  how  cruelly  he  has  behaved  to  that 
poor  boy  of  his  by  his  English  wife — never  seen  him  since  he  was 
an  infant ;  kept  him  at  some  school  in  England  ;  and  all  because 
his  vanity  does  not  like  the  world  to  know  that  he  has  a  son  of 
nineteen  !  Well,  I  have  induced  him  to  recall  this  poor  youth." 

"Indeed  !  and  how?" 

"Why,"  said  Eugenie,  with  a  smile,  "he  wanted  a  loan,  poor 
man,  and  I  could  therefore  impose  conditions  by  way  of  interest. 
But  I  also  managed  to  conciliate  him  to  the  proposition,  by  repre- 
senting that,  if  the  young  man  were  good-looking,  he  might, 
himself,  with  our  connections,  etc.,  form  an  advantageous  mar- 
riage j  and  that  in  such  a  case,  if  the  father  treated  him  now 
justly  and  kindly,  he  would  naturally  partake  with  the  father 
whatever  benefits  the  marriage  might  confer." 

"Ah!  you  are  an  excellent  diplomatist,  Eugenie;  and  you 
turn  people's  heads  by  always  acting  from  your  heart.  Hush, 
here  comes  the  Vicomte  !  " 

"  A  delightful  ball,"  said  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  approach- 
ing the  hostess.  "Pray,  has  that  young  lady  yonder,  in  the  pink 
dress,  any  fortune?  She  is  pretty — eh?  You  observe  she  is 
looking  at  me — I  mean  at  us  !  " 

"  My  dear  cousin,  what  a  compliment  you  pay  to  marriage. 
You  have  had  two  wives,  and  you  are  ever  on  the  qui  vive  for  a 
third!" 

"  What  would  you  have  me  do?  We  cannot  resist  the  over- 
tures of  your  bewitching  sex.  Hum — what  fortune  has  she?  " 

"  Not  a  sou ;  besides,  she  is  engaged." 

"  Oh  !  now  I  look  at  her — she  is  not  pretty — not  at  all.  I 
made  a  mistake,  I  did  not  mean  her.  I  meant  the  young  lady  in 
blue." 

"Worse  and  worse — she  is  married  already.  Shall  I  present 
you?" 

"Ah,  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,"  said  Madame  d'Anville, 
"  have  you  found  out  a  new  bureau  de  mariage  ?  " 

The  Vicomte  pretended  not  to  hear  that  question.     But,  turn- 


236  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

ing  to  Eugenie,  took  her  aside,  and  said  with  an  air  in  which  he 
endeavored  to  throw  a  great  deal  of  sorrow:  "You  know,  my 
dear  cousin,  that  to  oblige  you,  I  consented  to  send  for  my  son, 
though,  as  I  always  said,  it  is  very  unpleasant  for  a  man  like  me 
in  the  prime  of  life  to  hawk  about  a  great  boy  of  nineteen  or 
twenty.  People  soon  say,  '  Old  Vaudemont  and  young  Vaude- 
mont.'  However,  a  father's  feelings  are  never  appealed  to  in 
vain."  (Here  the  Vicomte  put  his  handkerchief  to  his  eyes,  and 
after  a  pause,  continued):  "I  sent  for  him, — I  even  went  to 
your  old  bonne,  Madame  Dufour,  to  make  a  bargain  for  her  lodg- 
ings— and  this  day,  guess  my  grief,  I  received  a  letter  sealed  with 
black.  My  son  is  dead  !  A  sudden  fever — it  is  shocking  !  " 

"  Horrible  !  dead  !  Your  own  son,  whom  you  hardly  ever  saw 
— never  since  he  was  an  infant !  " 

"Yes;  that  softens  the  blow  very  much.  And  now  you  see  / 
must  marry.  If  the  boy  had  been  good-looking,  and  like  me, 
and  so  forth,  why,  as  you  observed,  he  might  have  made  a  good 
match,  and  allowed  me  a  certain  sum,  or  we  could  have  all  lived 
together." 

"  And  your  son  is  dead,  and  you  come  to  a  ball !  " 

"Je  suis philosophe,^  said  the  Vicomte,  shrugging  his  should- 
ers. "And,  as  you  say,  I  never  saw  him.  It  saves  me  seven 
hundred  francs  a  year.  Don't  say  a  word  to  any  one.  I  sha'n't 
give  out  that  he  is  dead,  poor  fellow  !  Pray  be  discreet :  you  see 
there  are  some  ill-natured  people  who  might  think  it  odd  I  do  not 
shut  myself  up.  I  can  wait  till  Paris  is  quite  empty.  It  would 
be  a  pity  to  lose  any  opportunity  at  present,  for  now,  you  see,  I 
must  marry  !  "  And  the  philosophe  sauntered  away. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

GUIOMAR. 

"  Those  devotions  I  am  to  pay 
Are  written  in  my  heart,  not  in  this  book." 

Enter  RUTILIO. 
"  I  am  pursued — all  the  ports  are  stopped  too, 

Not  any  hope  to  escape — behind,  before  me, 

On  either  side,  I  am  beset." 
BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  : — The  Custom  of  the  Country. 

THE  party  were  just  gone ;  it  was  already  the  peep  of  day  ;  the 
wheels  of  the  last  carriage  had  died  in  the  distance. 

Madame  de  Merville  had  dismissed  her  woman,  and  was  seated 
in  her  own  room  leaning  her  head  musingly  on  her  hand, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  237 

Beside  her  was  the  table  that  held  her  MSS.  and  a  few  books, 
amidst  which  were  scattered  vases  of  flowers.  On  a  pedestal 
beneath  the  window  was  placed  a  marble  bust  of  Dante.  Through 
the  open  door  were  seen  in  perspective  the  rooms  just  deserted  by 
her  guests — the  lights  still  burned  in  the  chandeliers  and  giran- 
doles, contending  with  the  daylight  that  came  through  the  half- 
closed  curtains.  The  person  of  the  inmate  was  in  harmony  with  the 
apartment.  It  was  characterized  by  a  certain  grace  which,  for  want 
of  a  better  epithet,  writers  are  prone  to  call  classical  or  antique. 
Her  complexion,  seeming  paler  than  usual  by  that  light,  was  yet 
soft  and  delicate ;  the  features  well  cut,  but  small  and  womanly. 
About  the  face  there  was  that  rarest  of  all  charms,  the  combina- 
tion of  intellect  with  sweetness  ;  the  eyes,  of  a  dark  blue,  were 
thoughtful,  perhaps  melancholy,  in  their  expression ;  but  the  long 
dark  lashes,  and  the  shape  of  the  eyes,  themselves  more  long  than 
full,  gave  to  their  intelligence  a  softness  approaching  to  languor, 
increased,  perhaps,  by  that  slight  shadow  round  and  below  the 
orbs  which  is  common  with  those  who  have  tasked  too  much 
either  the  mind  or  the  heart.  The  contour  of  the  face,  without 
being  sharp  or  angular,  had  yet  lost  a  little  of  the  roundness  of 
earlier  youth;  and  the  hand  on  which  she  leaned  was,  perhaps, 
even  too  white,  too  delicate,  for  the  beauty  which  belongs  to 
health ;  but  the  throat  and  bust  were  of  exquisite  symmetry. 

"  I  am  not  happy,"  murmured  Eugenie  to  herself;  "  yet  I  scarce 
know  why.  Is  it  really,  as  we  women  of  romance  have  said  till 
the  saying  is  worn  threadbare,  that  the  destiny  of  women  is  not 
fame  but  love?  Strange,  then,  that  while  I  have  so  often  pic- 
tured what  love  should  be,  I  have  never  felt  it.  And  now — and 
now,"  she  continued,  half  rising,  and  with  a  natural  pang, — 
"  now  I  am  no  longer  in  my  first  youth.  If  I  loved,  should  I  be 
loved  again  ?  How  happy  that  young  pair  seemed — they  are  never 
alone!" 

At  this  moment,  at  a  distance,  was  heard  the  report  of  fire- 
arms— again  !  Eugenie  started,  and  called  to  her  servant,  who, 
with  one  of  the  waiters  hired  for  the  night,  was  engaged  in  remov- 
ing, and  nibbling  as  he  removed,  the  remains  of  the  feast 
"  What  is  that,  at  this  hour?  Open  the  window  and  look  out !  " 

"I  can  see  nothing,  madame." 

"  Again — that  is  the  third  time.  Go  into  the  street  and  look — 
some  one  must  be  in  danger." 

The  servant  and  the  waiter,  both  curious,  and  not  willing  to 
part  company,  ran  down  the  stairs,  and  thence  into  the  street. 

Meanwhile  Morton,  after  vainly  attempting  Birnie's  window, 
which  the  traitor  had  previously  locked  and  barred  against  the 


238  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

escape  of  his  intended  victim,  crept  rapidly  along  the  roof, 
screened  by  the  parapet  not  only  from  the  shot  but  the  sight  of 
the  foe.  But  just  as  he  gained  the  point  at  which  the  lane  made 
an  angle  with  the  broad  street  it  adjoined,  he  cast  his  eyes  over 
the  parapet,  and  perceived  that  one  of  the  officers  had  ventured 
himself  to  the  fearful  bridge :  he  was  pursued — detection  and  cap- 
ture seemed  inevitable.  He  paused  and  breathed  hard.  He,  once 
the  heir  to  such  fortunes,  the  darling  of  such  affections  ! — he,  the 
hunted  accomplice  of  a  gang  of  miscreants  !  That  was  the  thought 
that  paralyzed — the  disgrace,  not  the  danger.  But  he  was  in 
advance  of  the  pursuer ;  he  hastened  on  ;  he  turned  the  angle. 
He  heard  a  shout  behind  from  the  opposite  side — the  officer  had 
passed  the  bridge :  "  It  is  but  one  man  as  yet,"  thought  he,  and 
his  nostrils  dilated  and  his  hands  clenched  as  he  glided  on,  glanc- 
ing at  each  casement  as  he  passed. 

Now  as  youth  and  vigor  thus  struggled  against  Law  for  his  life, 
near  at  hand  Death  was  busy  with  toil  and  disease. 

In  a  miserable  grabat,  or  garret,  a  mechanic,  yet  young,  and 
stricken  by  a  lingering  malady  contracted  by  the  labor  of  his 
occupation,  was  slowly  passing  from  that  world  which  had  frowned 
on  his  cradle,  and  relaxed  not  the  gloom  of  its  aspect  to  comfort 
his  bed  of  Death.  Now  this  man  had  married  for  love,  and  his 
wife  had  loved  him ;  and  it  was  the  cares  of  that  early  marriage 
which  had  consumed  him  to  the  bone.  But  extreme  want,  if  long 
continued,  eats  up  love  when  it  has  nothing  else  to  eat.  And 
when  people  are  very  long  dying,  the  people  they  fret  and  trouble 
begin  to  think  of  that  too  often  hypocritical  prettiness  of  phrase 
called  "a  happy  release."  So  the  worn-out  and  half-famished 
wife  did  not  care  three  straws  for  the  dying  husband,  whom  a 
year  or  two  ago  she  had  vowed  to  love  and  cherish  in  sickness 
and  in  health.  But  still  she  seemed  to  care,  for  she  moaned, 
and  pined,  and  wept,  as  the  man's  breath  grew  fainter  and 
fainter. 

"  Ah,  Jean  !  "  said  she,  sobbing,  "  what  will  become  of  me,  a 
poor,  lone  widow,  with  nobody  to  work  for  my  bread?  "  And  with 
that  thought  she  took  on  worse  than  before. 

"I  am  stifling,"  said  the  dying  man,  rolling  round  his  ghastly 
eyes.  ' '  How  hot  it  is  !  Open  the  window  ;  I  should  like  to  see 
the  light — daylight  once  again." 

"Man  Dieu  !  what  whims  he  has,  poor  man  ! "  muttered  the 
woman,  without  stirring. 

The  poor  wretch  put  out  his  skeleton  hand  and  clutched  his 
wife's  arm. 

"  I  sha'n't  trouble  you  long,  Marie  !  Air — air  !  " 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  239 

"Jean,  you  will  make  yourself  worse;  besides,  I  shall  catch 
my  death  of  cold.  I  have  scarce  a  rag  on,  but  I  will  just  open 
the  door." 

" Pardon  me,"  groaned  the  sufferer;  "  leave  me,  then," 

Poor  fellow  !  perhaps  at  that  moment  the  thought  of  unkind- 
ness  was  sharper  than  the  sharp  cough  which  brought  blood  at 
every  paroxysm.  He  did  not  like  her  so  near  him,  but  he  did  not 
blame  her.  Again,  I  say,  poor  fellow  ! 

The  woman  opened  the  door,  went  to  the  other  side  of  the 
room,  and  sat  down  on  an  old  box  and  began  darning  an  old 
neck-handkerchief.  The  silence  was  soon  broken  by  the  moans 
of  the  fast-dying  man,  and  again  he  muttered,  as  he  tossed  to  and 
fro,  with  baked  white  lips : 

"Jem'etouffe!  Air!  " 

There  was  no  resisting  that  prayer,  it  seemed  so  like  the  last. 
The  wife  laid  down  the  needle,  put  the  handkerchief  round  her 
throat,  and  opened  the  window. 

"  Do  you  feel  easier  now?" 

"Bless  you,  Marie — yes;  that's  good — good.  It  puts  me  in 
mind  of  old  days,  that  breath  of  air,  before  we  came  to  Paris.  I 
wish  I  could  work  for  you  now,  Marie." 

"  Jean !  My  poor  Jean  !  "  said  the  woman,  and  the  words  and 
the  voice  took  back  her  hardening  heart  to  the  fresh  fields  and 
tender  thoughts  of  the  past  time.  And  she  walked  up  to  the  bed, 
and  he  leaned  his  temples,  damp  with  livid  dews,  upon  her 
breast. 

"  I  have  been  a  sad  burden  to  you,  Marie :  we  should  not  have 
married  so  soon ;  but  I  thought  I  was  stronger.  Don't  cry ;  we 
have  no  little  ones,  thank  God.  It  will  be  much  better  for  you 
when  I  am  gone." 

And  so,  word  after  word  gasped  out,  he  stopped  suddenly  and 
seemed  to  fall  asleep. 

The  wife  then  attempted  gently  to  lay  him  once  more  on  his 
pillow  ;  the  head  fell  back  heavily,  the  jaw  had  dropped,  the 
teeth  were  set,  the  eyes  were  open  and  like  stone — the  truth  broke 
on  her ! 

"Jean — Jean  !  My  God,  he  is  dead  !  and  I  was  unkind  to  him 
at  the  last !  "  With  these  words  she  fell  upon  the  corpse,  happily 
herself  insensible. 

Just  at  that  moment  a  human  face  peered  in  at  the  window. 
Through  that  aperture,  after  a  moment's  pause,  a  young  man 
leaped  lightly  into  the  room.  He  looked  round  with  a  hurried 
glance,  but  scarcely  noticed  the  forms  stretched  on  the  pallet.  It 
was  enough  for  him  that  they  seemed  to  sleep,  and  saw  him  not. 


240  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

He  stole  across  the  room,  the  door  of  which  Marie  had  left  open, 
and  descended  the  stairs.  He  had  almost  gained  the  courtyard 
into  which  the  stairs  conducted,  when  he  heard  voices  below  by 
the  porter's  lodge. 

"  The  police  have  discovered  a  gang  of  coiners  !  " 

"  Coiners!  " 

' '  Yes,  one  has  been  shot  dead  !  I  have  seen  his  body  in  the 
kennel :  another  has  fled  along  the  roofs — a  desperate  fellow !  We 
were  to  watch  for  him.  Let  us  go  up-stairs  and  get  on  the 
roof  and  look  out. ' ' 

By  the  hum  of  approval  that  followed  this  proposition,  Morton 
judged  rightly  that  it  had  been  addressed  to  several  persons  whom 
curiosity  and  the  explosion  of  the  pistols  had  drawn  from  their 
beds,  and  who  were  grouped  round  the  porter's  lodge.  What  was 
to  be  done?  To  advance  was  impossible.  Was  there  yet  time  to 
retreat?  It  was  at  least  the  only  course  left  him  ;  he  sprang  back 
up  the  stairs ;  he  had  just  gained  the  first  flight  when  he  heard 
steps  descending ;  then,  suddenly,  it  flashed  across  him  that  he 
had  left  open  the  window  above:  that,  doubtless,  by  that  impru- 
dent oversight,  the  officer  in  pursuit  had  detected  a  clue  to  the 
path  he  had  taken.  What  was  to  be  done  ? — die  as  G  aw  trey  had 
done  !  Death  rather  than  the  galleys.  As  he  thus  resolved,  he  saw 
to  the  right  the  open  door  of  an  apartment  in  which  lights  still 
glimmered  in  their  sockets.  It  seemed  deserted ;  he  entered 
boldly  and  at  once,  closing  the  door  after  him.  Wines  and  viands 
still  left  on  the  table;  gilded  mirrors,  reflecting  the  stern  face  of 
the  solitary  intruder;  here  and  there  an  artificial  flower;  a  knot 
of  riband  on  the  floor ;  all  betokening  the  gaieties  and  graces  of 
luxurious  life — the  dance,  the  revel,  the  feast — all  this  in  one 
apartment !  Above,  in  the  same  house,  the  pallet — the  corpse — 
the  widow — famine  and  woe  !  Such  is  a  great  city  !  Such,  above 
all,  is  Paris !  Where,  under  the  same  roof,  are  gathered  such 
antagonist  varieties  of  the  social  state !  Nothing  strange  in  this ; 
it  is  strange  and  sad,  that  so  little  do  people  thus  neighbors  know 
of  each  other,  that  the  owner  of  those  rooms  had  a  heart  soft  to 
every  distress,  but  she  did  not  know  the  distress  so  close  at  hand. 
The  music  that  had  charmed  her  guests  had  mounted  gaily  to  the 
vexed  ears  of  agony  and  hunger.  Morton  passed  the  first  room — 
a  second ;  he  came  to  a  third,  and  Eugenie  de  Merville,  looking 
up  at  that  instant,  saw  before  her  an  apparition  that  might  well 
have  alarmed  the  boldest.  His  head  was  uncovered  ;  his  dark 
hair  shadowed  in  wild  and  disorderly  profusion  the  pale  face,  and 
features,  beautiful  indeed,  but  at  that  moment  of  the  beauty  which 
i  artist  would  impart  to  a  young  gladiator — stamped  with  defi- 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  24* 

ance,  menace,  and  despair.  The  disordered  garb ;  the  fierce 
aspect;  the  dark  eyes,  that  literally  shone  through  the  shadows  of 
the  room — all  conspired  to  increase  the  terror  of  so  abrupt  a 
presence. 

"What  are  you?  What  do  you  seek  here?  "  said  she,  falter- 
ingly,  placing  her  hand  on  the  bell  as  she  spoke. 

Upon  that  soft  hand  Morton  laid  his  own. 

"I  seek  my  life!  I  am  pursued!  I  am  at  your  mercy !  lam 
innocent !  Can  you  save  me  ?  " 

As  he  spoke,  the  door  of  the  outer  room  beyond  was  heard  to 
open,  and  steps  and  voices  were  at  hand. 

"Ah!"  he  exclaimed,  recoiling  as  he  recognized  her  face. 
"  And  is  it  to  yott  that  I  have  fled  ?  " 

Eugenie  also  recognized  the  stranger;  and  there  was  something 
in  theii  relative  positions — the  suppliant,  the  protectress — that 
excited  both  her  imagination  and  her  pity.  A  slight  color  man- 
tled to  her  cheeks ;  her  look  was  gentle  and  compassionate. 

"  Poor  boy  !  so  young  !  "  she  said,  "  Hush  !  " 

She  withdrew  her  hand  from  his,  retired  a  few  steps,  lifted  a 
curtain  drawn  across  a  recess,  and  pointing  to  an  alcove  that  con- 
tained one  of  those  sofa-beds  common  in  French  houses,  added  in 
a  whisper : 

"  Enter — you  are  saved." 

Morton  obeyed    and  Eugenie  replaced  the  curtain. 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

GUIOMAR. 

"Speak!     What  are  you?" 

RUTILIO. 

"  Gracious  woman,  hear  me.     I  am  a  stranger ; 
And  in  that  I  answer  all  your  demands." 

Custom  of  the  Country, 

EUGENIE  replaced  the  curtain.  And  scarcely  had  she  done  so, 
ere  the  steps  in  the  outer  room  entered  the  chamber  where  she 
stood.  Her  servant  was  accompanied  by  two  officers  of  the 
police. 

"Pardon,  madame,"  said  one  of  the  latter;  "but  we  are  in 
pursuit  of  a  criminal.  We  think  he  must  have  entered  this  house 
through  a  window  above  while  your  servant  was  in  the  street. 
Permit  us  to  search  ?  " 

"Without  doubt,"  answered  Eugenie,  seating  herself.  "If  he 
has  entered,  look  in  the  other  apartments.  I  have  not  quitted  this 
room." 

rf 


$4*  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

"  You  are  right.     Accept  our  apologies." 

And  the  officers  turned  back  to  examine  every  corner  where  the 
fugitive  was  not.  For  in  that  the  scouts  of  Justice  resembled 
their  mistress  :  when  does  man's  justice  look  to  the  right  place  ? 

The  servant  lingered  to  repeat  the  tale  he  had  heard — the  sight 
he  had  seen.  When,  at  that  instant,  he  saw  the  curtain  of  the 
alcove  slightly  stirred.  He  uttered  an  exclamation — sprung  to  the 
bed — his  hand  touched  the  curtain — Eugenie  seized  his  arm.  She 
did  not  speak  ;  but  as  he  turned  his  eyes  to  her,  astonished,  he 
saw  that  she  trembled,  and  that  her  cheek  was  as  white  as  marble. 

"  Madame,"  he  said,  hesitating,  "there  is  some  one  hid  in  the 
recess." 

"There  is!     Be  silent !" 

A  suspicion  flashed  across  the  servant's  mind.  The  pure,  the 
proud,  the  immaculate  Eugenie ! 

"There  is! — and  in  madame's  chamber  !  "  he  faltered  uncon- 
sciously. 

Eugenie's  quick  apprehensions  seized  the  foul  thought.  Her 
eyes  flashed,  her  cheek  crimsoned.  But  her  lofty  and  generous 
nature  conquered  even  the  indignant  and  scornful  burst  that  rushed 
to  her  lips.  The  truth  !  Could  she  trust  the  man  ?  A  doubt — 
and  the  charge  of  the  human  life  rendered  to  her  might  be 
betrayed.  Her  color  fell ;  tears  gushed  to  her  eyes. 

"  I  have  been  kind  to  you,  Francois.     Not  a  word  !  " 

"  Madame  confides  in  me — it  is  enough,"  said  the  Frenchman, 
bowing,  with  a  slight  smile  on  his  lips ;  and  he  drew  back  respect- 
fully. 

One  of  the  police  officers  re-entered. 

' '  We  have  done,  madame,  he  is  not  here.  Aha !  that  cur- 
tain !  " 

"It  is  madame's  bed,"  said  Francois.  "But  I  have  looked 
behind." 

"  I  am  most  sorry  to  have  disarranged  you,"  said  the  police- 
man, satisfied  with  the  answer;  "but  we  shall  have  him  yet." 
And  he  retired. 

The  last  footsteps  died  away,  the  last  door  of  the  apartments 
closed  behind  the  officers,  and  Eugenie  and  her  servant  stood 
alone  gazing  on  each  other. 

"You  may  retire,"  said  she,  at  last;  and  taking  her  purse  from 
the  table,  she  placed  it  in  his  hands. 

The  man  took  it,  with  a  significant  look. 

"Madame  may  depend  on  my  discretion." 

Eugenie  was  alone  again.  Those  words  rang  in  her  ear, — 
Eugenie  de  Merville  dependent  on  the  discretion  of  her  lackey  ! 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  243 

She  sunk  into  her  chair,  and,  her  excitement  succeeded  by  exhaus- 
tion, leaned  her  face  on  her  hands,  and  burst  into  tears.  She  was 
aroused  by  a  low  voice,  she  looked  up,  and  the  young  man  was 
kneeling  at  her  feet. 

"  Go — go  !  "  she  said  :  "I  have  done  for  you  all  I  can.  You 
heard — you  heard — my  own  hireling,  too  !  At  the  hazard  of  my 
own  good  name  you  are  saved.  Go  !  " 

"  Of  your  good  name  ?  " — for  Eugenie  forgot  that  it  was  looks, 
not  words,  that  had  so  wrung  her  pride — "  Your  good  name,"  he 
repeated  :  and  glancing  around  the  room — the  toilette,  the  cur- 
tain, the  recess  he  had  quitted — all  that  bespoke  that  chastest 
sanctuary  of  a  chaste  woman,  which  for  a  stranger  to  enter  is,  as 
it  were,  to  profane — her  meaning  broke  on  him.  "Your  good 
name  !  Your  hireling  !  No,  madame — no !  "  And  as  he  spoke, 
he  rose  to  his  feet.  "  Not  forme,  that  sacrifice  !  Your  humanity 
shall  not  cost  you  so  dear.  Ho,  there  !  I  am  the  man  you  seek." 
And  he  strode  to  the  door. 

Eugenie  was  penetrated  with  the  answer.  She  sprung  to  him — 
she  grasped  his  garments. 

"Hush!  hush!  for  mercy's  sake!  What 'would  you  do? 
Think  you  I  could  ever  be  happy  again,  if  the  confidence  you 
placed  in  me  were  betrayed  ?  Be  calm — be  still.  I  knew  not 
what  I  said.  It  will  be  easy  to  undeceive  the  man — later — when 
you  are  saved.  And  you  are  innocent,  are  you  not? " 

"Oh,  madame,"  said  Morton,  "from  my  soul,  I  say  it,  I  am 
innocent — not  of  poverty,  wretchedness,  error,  shame ;  I  am  inno- 
cent of  crime.  May  Heaven  bless  you !  "  And  as  he  reverently 
kissed  the  hand  laid  on  his  arm,  there  was  something  in  his  voice 
so  touching,  in  his  manner  something  so  above  his  fortunes,  that 
Eugenie  was  lost  in  her  feelings  of  compassion,  surprise  and  some- 
thing, it  might  be,  of  admiration  in  her  wonder. 

"And,  oh!"  he  said,  passionately,  gazing  on  her  with  his 
dark,  brilliant  eyes,  liquid  with  emotion,  "you  have  made  my 
life  sweet  in  saving  it.  You — you — of  whom,  ever  since  the  first 
time,  almost  the  sole  time,  I  beheld  you,  I  have  so  often  mused 
and  dreamed.  Henceforth,  whatever  befal  me,  there  will  be  some 
recollections  that  will — that — " 

He  stopped  short,  for  his  heart  was  too  full  for  words ;  and  the 
silence  said  more  to  Eugenie  than  if  all  the  eloquence  of  Rousseau 
had  glowed  upon  his  tongue. 

"  And  who,  and  what  are  you?  "  she  asked,  after  a  pause. 

"  An  exile — an  orphan — an  outcast !  I  have  no  name !  Fare- 
well !  " 

"  No — stay  yet ;  the  danger  is  not  past.     Wait  till  my  servant 


244  NIGHT   AND 

is  gone   to  rest;  I  hear  him  yet.     Sit  down — sit  down.     And 
whither  would  you  go  ?  " 

I  know  not." 
'  Have  you  no  friends  ?  " 
None." 
No  home?" 
None." 

And  the  police  of  Paris  so  vigilant !  "  cried  Eugenie,  wring- 
ing her  hands.  ' '  What  is  to  be  done  ?  I  shall  have  saved  you 
in  vain  ;  you  will  be  discovered  !  Of  what  do  they  charge  you  ? 
Not  robbery — not — " 

And  she,  too,  stopped  short,  for  she  did  not  dare  to  breathe  the 
black  word  :  "  Murder  !  " 

"  I  know  not,"  said  Morton,  putting  his  hand  to  his  forehead, 
"except  of  being  friends  with  the  only  man  who  befriended  me 
— and  they  have  killed  him  !  " 

"Another  time  you  shall  tell  me  all." 

"Another  time!"  he  exclaimed,  eagerly.  "Shall  I  see  you 
again?" 

Eugenie  blushed  beneath  the  gaze  and  the  voice  of  joy. 

"Yes,"  she  said;  "yes.  But  I  must  reflect.  Be  calm — be 
silent.  Ah  !  A  happy  thought !  " 

She  sat  down,  wrote  a  hasty  line,  sealed,  and  gave  it  to  Morton. 

"  Take  this  note,  as  addressed,  to  Madame  Dufour;  it  will  pro- 
vide you  with  a  safe  lodging.  She  is  a  person  I  can  depend  on : 
an  old  servant  who  lived  with  my  mother,  and  to  whom  I  have 
given  a  small  pension.  She  has  a  lodging — it  is  lately  vacant — I 
promised  to  procure  her  a  tenant, — go — say  nothing  of  what  has 
passed.  I  will  see  her  and  arrange  all.  Wait !  Hark  !  All  is 
still !  I  will  go  first,  and  see  that  no  one  watches  you.  Stop," 
(and  she  threw  open  the  window,  and  looked  into  the  court). 
"The  porter's  door  is  open — that  is  fortunate!  Hurry  on,  and 
God  be  with  you !  " 

In  a  few  minutes  Morton  was  in  the  streets.  It  was  still  early 
. — the  thoroughfares  deserted — none  of  the  shops  yet  open.  The 
address  on  the  note  was  to  a  street  at  some  distance,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Seine.  He  passed  along  the  same  Quai  which  he  had 
trodden  but  a  few  hours  since ;  he  passed  the  same  splendid  bridge 
on  which  he  had  stood  despairing,  to  quit  it  revived ;  he  gained 
the  Rue  Faubourg  St.  Honore.  A  young  man  in  a  cabriolet,  on 
whose  fair  cheek  burned  the  hectic  of  late  vigils  and  lavish  dissi- 
pation, was  rolling  leisurely  home  from  the  gaming-house,  at  which 
he  had  been  more  than  usually  fortunate — his  pockets  were  laden 
with  notes  and  gold.  He  bent  forwards  as  Morton  passed  him, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  245 

Philip,  absorbed  in  his  reverie,  perceived  him  not,  and  continued 
his  way.  The  gentleman  turned  down  one  of  the  streets  to  the 
left,  stopped,  and  called  to  the  servant  dozing  behind  his 
cabriolet. 

' '  Follow  that  passenger  !  quietly — see  where  he  lodges ;  be  sure 
to  find  out  and  let  me  know.  I  shall  go  home  without  you." 
With  that  he  drove  on. 

Philip,  unconscious  of  the  espionage,  arrived  at  a  small  house 
in  a  quiet  but  respectable  street,  and  rang  the  bell  several  times 
before  at  last  he  was  admitted  by  Madame  Dufour  herself  in  her 
night-cap.  The  old  woman  looked  askant  and  alarmed  at  the 
unexpected  apparition.  But  the  note  seemed  at  once  to  satisfy 
her.  She  conducted  him  to  an  apartment  on  the  first  floor,  small, 
but  neatly  and  even  elegantly  furnished ;  consisting  of  a  sitting- 
room  and  a  bed-chamber,  and  said,  quietly : 

"  Will  they  suit  Monsieur?  " 

To  Monsieur  they  seemed  a  palace.     Morton  nodded  assent. 

''And  will  Monsieur  sleep  for  a  short  time?" 

"Yes." 

"The  bed  is  well-aired.  The  rooms  have  only  been  vacant 
three  days  since.  Can  I  get  you  anything  till  your  luggage 
arrives?" 

"No." 

The  woman  left  him.  He  threw  off  his  clothes ;  flung  himself 
on  the  bed,  and  did  not  wake  till  noon. 

When  his  eyes  unclosed — when  they  rested  on  that  calm  cham- 
ber, with  its  air  of  health,  and  cleanliness,  and  comfort — it  was 
long  before  he  could  convince  himself  that  he  was  yet  awake. 
He  missed  the  loud,  deep  voice  of  Gawtrey — the  smoke  of  the 
dead  man's  meerschaum — the  gloomy  garret — the  distained  walls 
— the  stealthy  whisper  of  the  loathed  Birnie ;  slowly  the  life  led 
and  the  life  gone  within  the  last  twelve  hours  grew  upon  his  strug- 
gling memory.  He  groaned,  and  turned  uneasily  round,  when 
the  door  slightly  opened,  and  he  sprung  up  fiercely : 

"Who  is  there?" 

"It  is  only  I,  sir,"  answered  Madame  Dufour.  "  I  have  been 
in  three  times  to  see  if  you  were  stirring.  There  is  a  letter  I 
believe  for  you,  sir;  though  there  is  no  name  to  it,"  and  she  laid 
the  letter  on  the  chair  beside  him.  Did  it  come  from  her — the 
saving  angel  ?  He  seized  it.  The  cover  was  blank  ;  it  was  sealed 
with  a  device,  as  of  a  ring  seal.  He  tore  it  open,  and  found  four 
billets  de  banque  for  1000  francs  each, — a  sum  equivalent  in  our 
money  to  about  ^160. 

"  Who  sent  this,  the — the  lady  from  whom  I  brought  the  note?  " 


246  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

"Madame  de  Merville?  Certainly  not,  sir,"  said  Madame 
Dufour,  who,  with  the  privilege  of  age,  was  now  unscrupulously 
filling  the  water -jugs  and  settling  the  toilette-table.  "A  young 
man  called  about  two  hours  after  you  had  gone  to  bed ;  and 
describing  you,  inquired  if  you  lodged  here,  and  what  your  name 
was.  I  said  you  had  just  arrived,  and  that  I  did  not  yet  know 
your  name.  So  he  went  away,  and  came  again  half-an-hour  after- 
wards with  this  letter,  which  he  charged  me  to  deliver  to  you 
safely." 

"A  young  man — a  gentleman?" 

"No,  sir;  he  seemed  a  smart  but  common  sort  of  lad."  For 
the  unsophisticated  Madame  Dufour  did  not  discover  in  the  plain 
black  frock  and  drab  gaiters  of  the  bearer  of  that  letter  the  simple 
livery  of  an  English  gentleman's  groom. 

Whom  could  it  come  from,  if  not  from  Madame  de  Merville? 
Perhaps  from  one  of  Gawtrey's  late  friends.  A  suspicion  of 
Arthur  Beaufort  crossed  him,  but  he  indignantly  dismissed  it. 
Men  are  seldom  credulous  of  what  they  are  unwilling  to  believe  ! 
What  kindness  had  the  Beauforts  hitherto  shown  him?  Left  his 
mother  to  perish  broken-hearted ;  stolen  from  him  his  brother, 
and  steeled,  in  that  brother,  the  only  heart  wherein  he  had  a 
right  to  look  for  gratitude  and  love !  No,  it  must  be  Madame  de 
Merville.  He  dismissed  Madame  Dufour  for  pen  and  paper — rose 
— wrote  a  letter  to  Eugenie — grateful,  but  proud,  and  enclosed  the 
notes.  He  then  summoned  Madame  Dufour,  and  sent  her  with 
his  despatch. 

"  Ah,  madame,"  said  the  ci-devant  bonne,  when  she  found  her- 
self in  Eugenie's  presence.  "The  poor  lad  !  how  handsome  he 
is,  and  how  shameful  in  the  Vicomte  to  let  him  wear  such  clothes !  " 

"The  Vicomte!  " 

"  Oh,  my  dear  mistress,  you  must  not  deny  it.  You  told  me, 
in  your  note,  to  ask  him  no  questions,  but  I  guessed  at  once. 
The  Vicomte  told  me  himself  that  he  should  have  the  young  gen- 
tleman over  in  a  few  days.  You  need  not  be  ashamed  of  him. 
You  will  see  what  a  difference  clothes  will  make  in  his  appearance ; 
and  I  have  taken  it  on  myself  to  order  a  tailor  to  go  to  him.  The 
Vicomte  must  pay  me." 

"  Not  a  word  to  the  Vicomte  as  yet.  We  will  surprise  him," 
said  Eugenie,  laughing. 

Madame  de  Merville  had  been  all  that  morning  trying  to  invent 
some  story  to  account  for  her  interest  in  the  lodger,  and  now  hov 
fortune  favored  her ! 

"  But  is  that  a  letter  for  me  !  " 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  247 

"And  I  had  almost  forgot  it,"  said  Madame  Dufour,  as  she 
extended  the  letter, 

Whatever  there  had  hitherto  been  in  the  circumstances  con- 
nected with  Morton,  that  had  roused  the  interest  and  excited  the 
romance  of  Eugenie  de  Merville,  her  fancy  was  yet  more  attracted 
by  the  tone  of  the  letter  she  now  read.  For  though  Morton, 
more  accustomed  to  speak  than  to  write  French,  expressed  him- 
self with  less  precision,  and  a  less  euphuistic  selection  of  phrase, 
than  the  authors  and  elegans  who  formed  her  usual  correspondents ; 
there  was  an  innate  and  rough  nobleness — a  strong  and  profound 
feeling — in  every  line  of  his  letter,  which  increased  her  surprise 
and  admiration. 

"  All  that  surrounds  him — all  that  belongs  to  him,  is  strange- 
ness and  mystery  !  "  murmured  she ;  and  she  sat  down  to  reply. 

When  Madame  Dufour  departed  with  that  letter,  Eugenie 
remained  silent  and  thoughtful  for  more  than  an  hour.  Morton's 
letter  before  her;  and  sweet,  in  their  indistinctness,  were  the 
recollections  and  the  images  that  crowded  on  her  mind. 

Morton,  satisfied  by  the  earnest  and  solemn  assurances  of 
Eugenie  that  she  was  not  the  unknown  donor  of  the  sum  she  rein- 
closed,  after  puzzling  himself  in  vain  to  form  any  new  conject- 
ures as  to  the  quarter  whence  it  came,  felt  that  under  his  present 
circumstances  it  would  be  an  absurd  Quixotism  to  refuse  to  apply 
what  the  very  Providence  to  whom  he  had  anew  consigned  him- 
self seemed  to  have  sent  to  his  aid.  And  it  placed  him,  too, 
beyond  the  offer  of  all  pecuniary  assistance  from  one  from  whom 
he  could-  least  have  brooked  to  receive  it.  He  consented,  there- 
fore, to  all  that  the  loquacious  tailor  proposed  to  him.  And  it 
would  have  been  difficult  to  have  recognized  the  wild  and  frenzied 
fugitive  in  the  stately  and  graceful  form,  with  its  young  beauty 
and  air  of  well-born  pride,  which  the  next  day  sat  by  the  side  of 
Eugenie.  And  that  day  he  told  his  sad  and  troubled  story,  and 
Eugenie  wept;  and  from  that  day  he  came  daily ;  and  two  weeks 
— happy,  dreamlike,  intoxicating  to  both — passed  by ;  and  as 
their  last  sun  set,  he  was  kneeling  at  her  feet,  and  breathing  to 
one  to  whom  the  homage  of  wit,  and  genius,  and  complacent 
wealth,  had  hitherto  been  vainly  proffered,  the  impetuous,  agi- 
tated, delicious  secrets  of  the  First  Love.  He  spoke,  and  rose  to 
depart  forever — when  the  look  and  sigh  detained  him. 

The  next  day,  after  a  sleepless  night,  Eugenie  de  Merville  sent 
for  the  Vicomte  de  Vaudemont. 


?48  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

"  A  silver  river  small 
In  sweet  accents 
Its  music  vents — 
The  warbling  virginal 
To  which  the  merry  birds  do  sing, 
Timed  with  stops  of  gold  the  silver  string." 

SIR  RICHARD  FANSHAW. 

ONE  evening,  several  weeks  after  the  events  just  commemorated, 
a  stranger,  leading  in  his  hand  a  young  child,  entered  the  church- 
yard of  H .  The  sun  had  not  long  set,  and  the  short  twi- 
light of  deepening  summer  reigned  in  the  tranquil  skies ;  you 
might  still  hear  from  the  trees  above  the  graves  the  chirp  of  some 
joyous  bird — what  cared  he,  the  denizen  of  the  skies,  for  the  dead 
that  slept  below  ?  What  did  he  value  save  the  greenness  and 
repose  of  the  spot, — to  him  alike,  the  garden  or  the  grave !  As 
the  man  and  the  child  passed,  the  robin,  scarcely  scared  by  their 
tread  from  the  long  grass  beside  one  of  the  mounds,  looked  at 
them  with  its  bright,  blithe  eye.  It  was  a  famous  plot  for  the 
robin — the  old  churchyard  !  That  domestic  bird — "  the  friend 
of  man,"  as  it  has  been  called  by  the  poets — found  a  jolly  sup- 
per among  the  worms ! 

The  stranger,  on  reaching  the  middle  of  the  sacred  ground, 
paused  and  looked  round  him  wistfully.  He  then  approached, 
slowly  and  hesitatingly,  an  oblong  tablet,  on  which  were  graven, 
in  letters  yet  fresh  and  new,  these  words : 

TO  THE 

MEMORY  OK  ONE  CALUMNIATED  AND  WRONGED, 

THIS  BURIAL-STONE  IS  DEDICATED 

BY  HER  SON. 

Such,  with  the  addition  of  the  dates  of  birth  and  death,  was 
the  tablet  which  Philip  Morton  had  directed  to  be  placed  over 
his  mother's  bones;  and  around  it  was  set  a  simple  palisade, 
which  defended  it  from  the  tread  of  the  children,  who  sometimes, 
in  defiance  of  the  beadle,  played  over  the  dust  of  the  former 
race.  v 

"Thy  son!"  muttered  the  stranger,  while  the  child  stood 
quietly  by  his  side,  pleased  by  the  trees,  the  grass,  the  song  of 
the  birds,  and  recking  not  of  grief  or  death, — "  thy  son  !  But 
not  thy  favored  son — thy  darling — thy  youngest  born  ;  on  what 
spot  of  earth  do  thine  eyes  look  down  on  him  ?  Surely  in 
Heaven  thy  love  has  preserved  the  one  whom  on  earth  thou  didst 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  249 

most  cherish,  from  the  sufferings  and  the  trials  that  have  visited 
the  less-favored  outcast.  Oh,  mother — mother  !  it  was  not  his 
crime — not  Philip's — that  he  did  not  fulfil  to  the  last  the  trust 
bequeathed  to  him  !  Happier,  perhaps,  as  it  is  !  And,  oh  .'  if 
thy  memory  be  graven  as  deeply  in  my  brother's  heart  as  my  own, 
how  often  will  it  warn  and  save  him  !  That  memory  !  it  has 
been  to  me  the  angel  of  my  life.  To  thee — to  thee,  even  in 
death,  I  owe  it,  if,  though  erring,  I  am  not  criminal, — if  I  have 
lived  with  the  lepers,  and  am  still  undefiled !  "  His  lips  then 
were  silent — not  his  heart ! 

After  a  few  minutes  thus  consumed  he  turned  to  the  child,  and 
said,  gently  and  in  a  tremulous  voice  :  "  Fanny,  you  have  been 
taught  to  pray — you  will  live  near  this  spot, — will  you  come  some- 
times here  and  pray  that  you  may  grow  up  good  and  innocent, 
and  become  a  blessing  to  those  who  love  you  ?  " 

"Will  papa  ever  come  to  hear  me  pray?  " 

That  sad  and  unconscious  question  went  to  the  heart  of  Mor- 
ton. The  child  could  not  comprehend  death.  He  had  sought  to 
explain  it,  but  she  had  been  accustomed  to  consider  her  protec- 
tor dead  when  he  was  absent  from  her,  and  she  still  insisted  that 
he  must  come  again  to  life.  And  that  man  of  turbulence  and 
crime,  who  had  passed  unrepentant,  unabsolved,  from  sin  to  judg- 
ment :  it  was  an  awful  question ;  "  If  he  should  hear  her  pray  ?  " 

"Yes!"  said  he,  after  a  pause,  "yes,  Fanny,  there  is  a 
Father  who  will  hear  you  pray ;  and  pray  to  Him  to  be  merciful 
to  those  who  have  been  kind  to  you.  Fanny,  you  and  I  may 
never  meet  again  !  " 

"Are  you  going  to  die  too?  Mechant,  every  one  dies  to 
Fanny  !  "  and,  clinging  to  him  endearingly,  she  put  up  her  lips 
to  kiss  him.  He  took  her  in  his  arms;  and,  as  a  tear  fell  upon 
her  rosy  cheek,  she  said  :  "  Don't  cry,  brother,  for  I  love  you." 

"  Do  you,  dear  Fanny?  Then,  for  my  sake,  when  you  come  to 
this  place,  if  any  one  will  give  you  a  few  flowers,  scatter  them  on 
that  stone.  And  now  we  will  go  to  one  whom  you  must  love  also, 
and  to  whom,  as  I  have  told  you,  he  sends  you;  he  who — • 
Come !  " 

As  he  thus  spoke,  and  placed  Fanny  again  on  the  ground,  he 
was  startled  to  see,  precisely  on  the  spot  where  he  had  seen 
before  the  like  apparition — on  the  same  spot  where  the  father  had 
cursed  the  son,  the  motionless  form  of  an  old  man.  Morton 
recognized,  as  if  by  an  instinct  rather  than  by  an  effort  of  the 
memory,  the  person  to  whom  he  was  bound. 

He  walked  slowly  towards  him ;  but  Fanny  abruptly  left  his 
side,  lured  by  a  moth  that  flitted  duskily  over  the  graves, 


250  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"  Your  name,  sir,  I  think,  is  Simon  Gawtrey?  "  said  Morton. 
"  I  have  come  to  England  in  quest  of  you." 

"Of  me?"  said  the  old  man,  half  rising,  and  his  eyes,  now 
completely  blind,  rolled  vacantly  over  Morton's  person.  "  Of 
me?  For  what?  Who  are  you?  I  don't  know  your  voice  !  " 

' '  I  come  to  you  from  your  son  !  ' ' 

"  My  son  !  "  exclaimed  the  old  man,  with  great  vehemence, — 
"the  reprobate  !  —  the  dishonored  !  — the  infamous  !  — the 
accursed — ' ' 

' '  Hush  !  you  revile  the  dead  ! ' ' 

"  Dead  !  "  muttered  the  wretched  father,  tottering  back  to  the 
seat  he  had  quitted, — "dead  !  "  and  the  sound  of  his  voice  was 
so  full  of  anguish,  that  the  dog  at  his  feet,  which  Morton  had  not 
hitherto  perceived,  echoed  it  with  a  dismal  cry,  that  recalled  to 
Philip  the  awful  day  in  which  he  had  seen  the  son  quit  the  father 
for  the  last  time  on  earth. 

The  sound  brought  Fanny  to  the  spot ;  and,  with  a  laugh  of 
delight,  which  made  to  it  a  strange  contrast,  she  threw  herself  on 
the  grass  beside  the  dog  and  sought  to  entice  it  to  play.  So 
there,  in  that  place  of  death,  were  knit  together  the  four  links  in 
the  Great  Chain ;  lusty  and  blooming  life — desolate  and  doting 
age — infancy,  yet  scarce  conscious  of  a  soul — and  the  dumb  brute, 
that  has  no  warrant  of  a  Hereafter ! 

"  Dead  !  dead  !  "  repeated  the  old  man,  covering  his  sightless 
balls  with  his  withered  hands.  "Poor  William  !  " 

"  He  remembered  you  to  the  last.  He  bade  me  seek  you  out ; 
he  bade  me  replace  the  guilty  son  with  a  thing  pure  and  inno- 
cent, as  he  had  been  had  he  died  in  his  cradle — a  child  to  com- 
fort your  old  age !  Kneel,  Fanny,  I  have  found  you  a  father  who 
will  cherish  you — (oh  !  you  will,  sir,  will  you  not  ?) — as  he  whom 
you  may  see  no  more  !  " 

There  was  something  in  Morton's  voice  so  solemn,  that  it  awed 
and  touched  both  the  old  man  and  the  infant ;  and  Fanny,  creep- 
ing to  the  protector  thus  assigned  to  her,  and  putting  her  little 
hands  confidingly  on  his  knees,  said : 

"  Fanny  will  love  you  if  papa  wished  it.     Kiss  Fanny." 

"  Is  it  his  child — his  !  "  said  the  blind  man,  sobbing.  "  Come 
to  my  heart;  here — here  !  O  God,  forgive  me  !  " 

Morton  did  not  think  it  right  at  that  moment  to  undeceive  him 
with  regard  to  the  poor  child's  true  connection  with  the  deceased ; 
and  he  waited  in  silence  till  Simon,  after  a  burst  of  passionate 
grief  and  tenderness,  rose,  and,  still  clasping  the  child  to  his 
breast,  said : 

"Sir,  forgive  me !  I  am  a  very  weak  old  man — I  have  many 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  251 

thanks  to  give — I  have  much  too,  to  learn.  My  poor  son  !  he 
did  not  die  in  want,  did  he?  " 

The  particulars  of  Gawtrey's  fate,  with  his  real  name  and  the 
various  aliases  he  had  assumed,  had  appeared  in  the  French 
journals,  and  been  partially  copied  into  the  English ;  and  Mor- 
ton had  expected  to  have  been  saved  the  painful  narrative  of  that 
fearful  death  ;  but  the  utter  seclusion  of  the  old  man,  his  infir- 
mity, and  his  estranged  habits,  had  shut  him  out  from  the  intel- 
ligence that  it  now  devolved  on  Philip  to  communicate.  Morton 
hesitated  a  little  before  he  answered  : 

"It  is  late  now ;  you  are  not  yet  prepared  to  receive  this  poor 
infant  at  your  home,  nor  to  hear  the  details  I  have  to  state.  I 
arrived  in  England  but  to-day.  I  shall  lodge  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, for  it  is  dear  to  me.  If  I  may  feel  sure,  then,  that  you 
will  receive  and  treasure  this  sacred  and  last  deposit  bequeathed 
to  you  by  your  unhappy  son,  I  will  bring  my  charge  to  you 
to-morrow,  and  we  will  then,  more -calmly  than  we  can  now,  talk 
over  the  past." 

"  You  do  not  answer  my  question,"  said  Simon,  passionately; 
"answer  that,  and  I  will  wait  for  the  rest.  They  call  me  a 
miser  !  Did  I  send  out  my  only  child  to  starve?  Answer  that !  " 

"Be  comforted.  He  did  not  die  in  want ;  and  he  has  even 
left  some  little  fortune  for  Fanny,  which  I  was  to  place  in  your 
hands. ' ' 

"  And  he  thought  to  bribe  the  old  miser  to  be  human  !  Well 
— well — well !  I  will  go  home." 

"  Lean  on  me  !  " 

The  dog  leapt  playfully  on  his  master  as  the  latter  rose,  and 
Fanny  slid  from  Simon's  arms  to  caress  and  talk  to  the  animal  in 
her  own  way.  As  they  slowly  passed  through  the  churchyard, 
Simon  muttered  incoherently  to  himself  for  several  paces,  and 
Morton  would  not  disturb,  since  he  could  not  comfort,  him. 

At  last,  he  said  abruptly ;   "  Did  my  son  repent  ?  " 

"I  hope,"  answered  Morton,  evasively,  "that,  had  his  life 
been  spared,  he  would  have  amended  !  " 

"  Tush,  sir!  I  am  past  seventy;  we  repent! — we  never 
amend  !  "  And  Simon  again  sunk  into  his  own  dim  and  discon- 
nected reveries. 

At  length  they  arrived  at  the  blind  man's  house.  The  door 
was  opened  to  them  by  an  old  woman  of  disagreeable  and  sinis- 
ter aspect,  dressed  out  much  too  gaily  for  the  station  of  a  ser- 
vant, though  such  was  her  reputed  capacity;  but  the  miser's 
affliction  saved  her  from  the  chance  of  his  comment  on  her 
extravagance.  As  she  stood  in  the  doorway  with  a  candle  in  her 


252  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

hand,  she  scanned  curiously,  and  with  no  welcoming  eye,  her 
master's  companions. 

'  Mrs.  Boxer,  my  son  is  dead  !  "  said  Simon,  in  a  hollow  voice. 
'And  a  good  thing  it  is,  then,  sir  !  " 
'For  shame,  woman  !  "  said  Morton,  indignantly. 
'  Heyday,  sir  !  Whom  have  we  got  here  ?  " 
'One,"    said   Simon,    sternly,    "whom  you  will  treat  with 
respect.     He  brings  me  a  blessing  to  lighten  my  loss.    One  harsh 
word  to  this  child,  and  you  quit  my  house  !  " 

The  woman  looked  perfectly  thunderstruck ;  but,  recovering 
herself,  she  said,  whiningly: 

"  I !  a  harsh  word  to  anything  my  dear,  kind  master  cares  for. 
And,  Lord,  what  a  sweet,  pretty  creature  it  is !  Come  here,  my 
dear !  " 

But  Fanny  shrunk  back,  and  would  not  let  go  Philip's  hand. 

"  To-morrow,  then,"  said  Morton  ;  and  he  was  turning  away, 
when  a  sudden  thought  seemed  to  cross  the  old  man  : 

"Stay,  sir, — stay!  I — I — did  my  son  say  I  was  rich?  I  am 
very,  very  poor — nothing  in  the  house,  or  I  should  have  been 
robbed  long  ago  ! ' ' 

"  Your  son  told  me  to  bring  money,  not  to  ask  for  it !  " 

"  Ask  for  it !  No ;  but,"  added  the  old  man,  and  a  gleam  of 
cunning  intelligence  shot  over  his  face,  ' '  but  he  had  got  into  a 
bad  set.  Ask  ! — No  !  Put  up  the  door-chain,  Mrs.  Boxer  !  " 

It  was  with  doubt  and  misgivings  that  Morton,  the  next  day, 
consigned  the  child,  who  had  already  nestled  herself  into  the 
warmest  core  of  his  heart,  to  the  care  of  Simon.  Nothing  short 
of  that  superstitious  respect  which  all  men  owe  to  the  wishes  of 
the  dead,  would  have  made  him  select  for  her  that  asylum ;  for 
Fate  had  now,  in  brightening  his  own  prospects,  given  him  an 
alternative  in  the  benevolence  of  Madame  de  Merville.  But  Gaw- 
trey  had  been  so  earnest  on  the  subject,  that  he  felt  as  if  he  had  no 
right  to  hesitate.  And  was  it  not  a  sort  of  atonement  to  any 
faults  the  son  might  have  committed  against  the  parent,  to  place 
by  the  old  man's  hearth  so  sweet  a  charge  ? 

The  strange  and  peculiar  mind  and  character  of  Fanny  made 
him,  however,  yet  more  anxious  than  otherwise  he  might  have  been. 
She  certainly  deserved  not  the  harsh  name  of  imbecile  or  idiot, 
but  she  was  different  from  all  other  children ;  she  felt  more 
acutely  than  most  of  her  age,  but  she  could  not  be  taught  to  rea- 
son. There  was  something  either  oblique  or  deficient  in  her  intel- 
lect, which  justified  the  most  melancholy  apprehensions ;  yet 
often, when  some  disordered,  incoherent,  inexplicable  train  of  ideas 
most  saddened  the  listener,  it  would  be  followed  by  fancies  so  ex- 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  253 

quisite  in  their  strangeness,  or  feelings  so  endearing  in  their 
tenderness,  that  suddenly  she  seemed  as  much  above,  as  before 
she  seemed  below,  the  ordinary  measure  of  infant  comprehension. 
She  was  like  a  creature  to  which  Nature,  in  some  cruel  but  bright 
caprice,  has  given  all  that  belongs  to  poetry,  but  denied  all  that 
belongs  to  the  common  understanding  necessary  to  mankind  ;  or, 
as  a  fairy  changeling,  not,  indeed,  according  to  the  vulgar  super- 
stition, malignant  and  deformed,  but  lovelier  than  the  children  of 
men,  and  haunted  by  dim  and  struggling  associations  of  a  gentler 
and  fairer  being,  yet  wholly  incapable  to  learn  the  dry  and  hard 
elements  which  make  up  the  knowledge  of  actual  life. 

Morton,  as  well  as  he  could,  sought  to  explain  to  Simon  the 
peculiarities  in  Fanny's  mental  constitution.  He  urged  on  him 
the  necessity  of  providing  for  her  careful  instruction,  and  Simon 
promised  to  send  her  to  the  best  school  the  neighborhood  could 
afford  ;  but,  as  the  old  man  spoke,  he  dwelt  so  much  on  the  sup- 
posed fact  that  Fanny  was  William's  daughter,  and  with  his 
remorse,  or  affection,  there  ran  so  interwoven  a  thread  of  sel- 
fishness and  avarice,  that  Morton  thought  it  would  be  dangerous 
to  his  interest  in  the  child  to  undeceive  his  error.  He,  therefore, 
— perhaps  excusably  enough, — remained  silent  on  that  subject. 

Gawtrey  had  placed  with  the  superior  of  the  convent,  together 
with  an  order  to  give  up  the  child  to  any  one  who  should  demand 
her  in  his  true  name,  which  he  confided  to  the  superior,  a  sum  of 
nearly  ^300,  which  he  solemnly  swore  had  been  honestly  obtain- 
ed, and  which,  in  all  his  shifts  and  adversities,  he  had  never 
allowed  himself  to  touch.  This  sum,  with  the  trifling  deduction 
made  for  arrears  due  to  the  convent,  Morton  now  placed  in 
Simon's  hands.  The  old  man  clutched  the  money,  which  was 
for  the  most  in  French  gold,  with  a  convulsive  gripe ;  and  then, 
as  if  ashamed  of  the  impulse,  said  : 

' '  But  you,  sir, — will  any  sum — that  is,  any  reasonable  sum — 
be  of  use  to  you  ? ' ' 

"  No !  and  if  it  were,  it  is  neither  yours  nor  mine — it  is  hers. 
Save  it  for  her,  and  add  to  it  what  you  can." 

While  this  conversation  took  place,  Fanny  had  been  consigned 
to  the  care  of  Mrs.  Boxer,  and  Philip  now  rose  to  see  and  bid  her 
farewell  before  he  departed. 

"  I  may  come  again  to  visit  you,  Mr.  Gawtrey;  and  I  pray 
Heaven  to  find  that  you  and  Fanny  have  been  a  mutual  blessing 
to  each  other.  Oh,  remember  how  your  son  loved  her  !  " 

"  He  had  a  good  heart  in  spite  of  all  his  sins,  Poor  William  !  " 
said  Simon. 


254  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Philip  Morton  heard,  and  his  lip  curled  with  a  sad  and  a.  just 
disdain. 

If,  when  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  William  Gawtrey  had  quitted 
his  father's  roof,  the  father  had  then  remembered  that  the  son's 
heart  was  good,  the  son  had  been  alive  still,  an  honest  and  a 
happy  man.  Do  ye  not  laugh,  O  ye  all-listening  Fiends  !  when 
men  praise  those  dead  whose  virtues  they  discovered  not  when 
alive?  It  takes  much  marble  to  build  the  sepulchre — how  little 
of  lath  and  plaster  would  have  repaired  the  garret ! 

On  turning  into  a  small  room  adjoining  the  parlor  in  which 
Gawtrey  sat,  Morton  found  Fanny  standing  gloomily  by  a  dull, 
soot -grimed  window,  which  looked  out  on  the  dead  walls  of  a 
small  yard.  Mrs.  Boxer,  seated  by  a  table,  was  employed  in  trim- 
ming a  cap,  and  putting  questions  to  Fanny  in  that  falsetto  voice 
of  endearment  in  which  people  not  used  to  children  are  apt  to 
address  them. 

"  And  so,  my  dear,  they've  never  taught  you  to  read  or  write? 
You've  been  sadly  neglected,  poor  thing  !  " 

"  We  must  do  our  best  to  supply  the  deficiency,"  said  Morton, 
as  he  entered. 

"Bless  me,  sir,  is  that  you  ?  "  and  the gouvernante  bustled  up 
and  dropped  a  low  courtesy ;  for  Morton,  dressed  then  in  the 
garb  of  a  gentleman,  was  of  a  mien  and  person  calculated  to  strike 
the  gaze  of  the  vulgar. 

"Ah,  brother !  "  cried  Fanny,  for  by  that  name  he  had  taught 
her  to  call  him  :  and  she  flew  to  his  side.  ' '  Come  away — it's 
ugly  there — it  makes  me  cold." 

"  My  child,  I  told  you  you  must  stay;  but  I  shall  hope  to  see 
you  again  some  day.  Will  you  not  be  kind  to  this  poor  creature, 
ma'am?  Forgive  me,  if  I  offended  you  last  night,  and  favor  me 
by  accepting  this  to  show  that  we  are  friends."  As  he  spoke,  he 
slid  his  purse  into  the  woman's  hand.  "I  shall  feel  ever  grateful 
for  whatever  you  can  do  for  Fanny." 

"Fanny  wants  nothing  from  any  one  else  ;  Fanny  wants  her 
brother." 

"  Sweet  child  !  I  fear  she  don't  take  to  me.  Will  you  like  me, 
Miss  Fanny  !  " 

"No!  get  along!" 

"  Fie,  Fanny  !  You  remember  you  did  not  take  to  me  at  first. 
But  she  is  so  affectionate,  ma'am ;  she  never  forgets  a  kindness. ' ' 

' '  I  will  do  all  I  can  to  please  her,  sir.  And  so  she  is  really 
master's  grandchild  ?  "  The  woman  fixed  her  eyes,  as  she  spoke, 
so  intently  on  Morton,  that  he  felt  embarrassed,  and  busied  him- 
self, without  answering,  in  caressing  and  soothing  Fanny,  who 


KIGHT   AND    MORNING.  255 

now  seemed  to  awake  to  the  affliction  about  to  visit  her;  for 
though  she  did  not  weep — she  very  rarely  wept — her  slight  frame 
trembled,  her  eyes  closed,  her  cheeks,  even  her  lips,  were  white, 
and  her  delicate  hands  were  clasped  tightly  round  the  neck  of  the 
one  about  to  abandon  her  to  strange  breasts. 

Morton  was  greatly  moved.  "  One  kiss,  Fanny  !  and  do  not 
forget  me  when  we  meet  again." 

The  child  pressed  her  lips  to  his  cheek,  but  the  lips  were  cold. 
He  put  her  down  gently ;  she  stood  mute  and  passive. 

"  Remember  that  he  wished  me  to  leave  you  here,"  whispered 
Morton,  using  an  argument  that  never  failed.  "  We  must  obey 
him:  and  so — God  bless  you,  Fanny  !  " 

He  rose  and  retreated  to  the  door ;  the  child  unclosed  her  eyes, 
and  gazed  at  him  with  a  strained,  painful,  imploring  gaze :  her  lips 
moved,  but  she  did  not  speak.  Morton  could  not  bear  that  silent 
woe.  He  sought  to  smile  on  her  consolingly ;  but  the  smile  would 
not  come.  He  closed  the  door,  and  hurried  from  the  house. 

From  that  day  Fanny  settled  into  a  kind  of  dreary,  inanimate 
stupor,  which  resembled  that  of  the  somnambulist  whom  the  mag- 
netizer  forgets  to  waken.  Hitherto,  with  all  the  eccentricities 
or  deficiencies  of  her  mind,  had  mingled  a  wild  and  airy  gaiety. 
That  was  vanished.  She  spoke  little  ;  she  never  played ;  no  toys 
could  lure  her — even  the  poor  dog  failed  to  win  her  notice.  If 
she  was  told  to  do  anything,  she  stared  vacantly,  and  stirred  not. 
She  evinced,  however,  a  kind  of  dumb  regard  to  the  old  blind 
man ;  she  would  creep  to  his  knees,  and  sit  there  for  hours,  seldom 
answering  when  he  addressed  her ;  but  uneasy,  anxious,  and  rest- 
less, if  he  left  her. 

"  Will  you  die  too  ?  "  she  asked  once ;  the  old  man  understood 
her  not,  and  she  did  not  try  to  explain.  Early  one  morning,  some 
days  after  Morton  was  gone,  they  missed  her  :  she  was  not  in  the 
house,  nor  the  dull  yard  where  she  was  sometimes  dismissed  and 
told  to  play — told  in  vain.  In  great  alarm,  the  old  man  accused 
Mrs.  Boxer  of  having  spirited  her  away ;  and  threatened  and 
stormed  so  loudly,  that  the  woman,  against  her  will,  went  forth  to 
the  search.  At  last,  she  found  the  child  in  the  churchyard,  stand- 
ing wistfully  beside  a  tomb. 

"What  do  you  here,  you  little  plague?"  said  Mrs.  Boxer, 
rudely  seizing  her  by  the  arm. 

' '  This  is  the  way  they  will  both  come  back  some  day  !  I  dreamt 
so!  " 

"If  ever  I  catch  you  here  again  !  "  said  the  housekeeper ;  and, 
wiping  her  brow  with  one  hand,  she  struck  the  child  with  the 
Other.  Fanny  had  never  been  struck  before.  She  recoiled  in  ter- 


256  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

ror  and  amazement ;  and,  for  the  first  time  since  her  arrival,  burst 
into  tears. 

"  Come — come,  no  crying  !  and  if  you  tell  master,  I'll  beat  you 
within  an  inch  of  your  life  i  "  So  saying,  she  caught  Fanny  in 
her  arms ;  and,  walking  about,  scolding  and  menacing,  till  she 
had  frightened  back  the  child's  tears,  she  returned  triumphantly 
to  the  house,  and,  bursting  into  the  parlor,  exclaimed,  "  Here's 
the  little  darling,  sir  !  " 

When  old  Simon  learned  where  the  child  had  been  found,  he 
was  glad ;  for  it  was  his  constant  habit,  whenever  the  evening  was 
fine,  to  glide  out  to  that  churchyard — his  dog  his  guide — and  sit 
on  his  one  favorite  spot  opposite  the  setting  sun.  This,  not  so 
much  for  the  sanctity  of  the  place,  or  the  meditations  it  might 
inspire,  as  because  it  was  the  nearest,  the  safest,  and  the  loneliest 
spot,  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  home,  where  the  blind  man  could 
inhale  the  air,  and  bask  in  the  light  of  heaven.  Hitherto,  think- 
ing it  sad  for  the  child,  he  had  never  taken  her  with  him  :  indeed, 
at  the  hour  of  his  monotonous  excursion,  she  had  generally  been 
banished  to  bed.  Now  she  was  permitted  to  accompany  him  ;  and 
the  old  man  and  the  infant  would  sit  there  side  by  side,  as  Age 
and  Infancy  rested  side  by  side  in  the  graves  below.  The  first 
symptom  of  childlike  interest  and  curiosity  that  Fanny  betrayed 
was  awakened  by  the  affliction  of  her  protector.  One  evening, 
as  they  thus  sat,  she  made  him  explain  what  the  desolation  of 
blindness  is.  She  seemed  to  comprehend  him,  though  he  did 
not  seek  to  adapt  his  complaints  to  her  understanding. 

"  Fanny  knows,"  said  she,  touchingly ;  "  for  she,  too,  is  blind 
here  :  "  and  she  pressed  her  hands  to  her  temples. 

Notwithstanding  her  silence  and  strange  ways,  and  although  he 
could  not  see  the  exquisite  loveliness  which  Nature,  as  in  remorse- 
ful pity,  had  lavished  on  her  outward  form,  Simon  soon  learned 
to  love  her  better  than  he  had  ever  loved  yet :  for  they  most 
cold  to  the  child  are  often  dotards  to  the  grandchild.  For  her 
even  his  avarice  slept.  Dainties,  never  before  known  at  his  spar- 
ring board,  were  ordered  to  tempt  her  appetite ;  toy-shops  ran- 
sacked to  amuse  her  indolence.  He  was  long,  however,  before 
he  could  prevail  on  himself  to  fulfil  his  promise  to  Morton,  and 
rob  himself  of  her  presence.  At  length,  however,  wearied  with 
Mrs.  Boxer's  lamentations  at  her  ignorance,  and  alarmed  himself 
at  some  evidences  of  helplessness,  which  made  him  dread  to  think 
what  her  future  might  be  when  left  alone  in  life,  he  placed  her  at 
a  day-school  in  the  suburb.  Here,  Fanny,  for  a  considerable 
time,  justified  the  harshest  assertions  of  her  stupidity.  She  could 
»ot  even  keep  her  eyes  two  minutes  together  on  the  page  from 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  257 

which  she  was  to  learn  the  mysteries  of  reading  ;  months  passed 
before  she  mastered  the  alphabet,  and,  a  month  after  she  had  again 
forgot  it,  and  the  labor  was  renewed.  The  only  thing  in  which 
she  showed  ability,  if  so  it  might  be  called,  was  in  the  use  of  the 
needle.  The  sisters  of  the  convent  had  already  taught  her  many 
pretty  devices  in  this  art,  and  when  she  found  that  at  the  school 
they  were  admired — that  she  was  praised  instead  of  blamed — her 
vanity  was  pleased,  and  she  learned  so  readily  all  that  they  could 
teach  in  this  not  unprofitable  accomplishment,  that  Mrs.  Boxer 
slyly  and  secretly  turned  her  tasks  to  account,  and  made  a  weekly 
perquisite  of  the  poor  pupil's  industry.  Another  faculty  she 
possessed,  in  common  with  persons  usually  deficient,  and  with  the 
lower  species,  viz. ,  a  most  accurate  and  faithful  recollection  of 
places.  At  first  Mrs.  Boxer  had  been  duly  sent  morning,  noon, 
and  evening,  to  take  her  to,  or  bring  her  from,  the  school ;  but 
this  was  so  great  a  grievance  to  Simon's  solitary  superintendent, 
and  Fanny  coaxed  the  old  man  so  endearingly  to  allow  her  to  go 
and  return  alone,  that  the  attendance,  unwelcome  to  both,  was 
waved.  Fanny  exulted  in  this  liberty ;  and  she  never,  in  going 
or  in  returning,  missed  passing  through  the  burial-ground,  and 
gazing  wistfully  at  the  tomb  from  which  she  yet  believed  Mor- 
ton would  one  day  reappear.  With  his  memory,  she  cherished 
also  that  of  her  earlier  and  more  guilty  protector;  but  they  were 
separate  feelings,  which  she  distinguished  in  her  own  way  : 

"  Papa  had  given  her  up.  She  knew  that  he  would  not  have 
sent  her  away,  far — far  over  the  great  water,  if  he  had  meant  to 
see  Fanny  again ;  but  her  brother  was  forced  to  leave  her — he 
would  come  to  life  one  day,  and  then  they  should  live  together  !  " 

One  day,  towards  the  end  of  autumn,  as  her  schoolmistress — a 
good  woman  on  the  whole,  but  who  had  not  yet  had  the  wit  to 
discover  by  what  cords  to  tune  the  instrument  over  which  so 
wearily  she  drew  her  unskilful  hand — one  day,  we  say,  the  school- 
mistress happened  to  be  dressed  for  a  christening  party  to  which 
she  was  invited  in  the  suburb ;  and,  accordingly,  after  the  morn- 
ing lessons,  the  pupils  were  to  be  dismissed  to  a  holiday.  As 
Fanny  now  came  last,  with  the  hopeless  spelling-book,  she  stopped 
suddenly  short,  and  her  eyes  rested  with  avidity  upon  a  large  bou- 
quet of  exotic  flowers,  with  which  the  good  lady  had  enlivened 
the  centre  of  the  parted  kerchief,  whose  yellow  gauze  modestly 
veiled  that  tender  section  of  female  beauty  which  poets  have  lik- 
ened to  hills  of  snow — a  chilling  simile  !  It  was  then  autumn ; 
and  field,  and  even  garden  flowers  were  growing  rare. 

"  Will  you  give  me  one  of  those  flowers?  "  said  Fanny,  drop* 
ping  her  book. 


258  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"  One  of  these  flowers,  child  !     Why  ?  " 

Fanny  did  not  answer  ;  but  one  of  the  elder  and  cleverer  girls 
said  : 

"  Oh  !  she  comes  from  France,  you  know,  ma'am,  and  the 
Roman  Catholics  put  flowers,  and  ribands,  and  things,  over  the 
graves ;  you  recollect,  ma'am,  we  were  reading  yesterday  about 
Pere-la-Chaise?" 

"Well  !  what  then?" 

"  And  Miss  Fanny  will  do  any  kind  of  work  for  us  if  we  will 
give  her  flowers." 

"My  brother  told  me  where  to  put  them — but  these  pretty 
flowers,  I  never  had  any  like  them ;  they  may  bring  him  back 
again  !  I'll  be  so  good  if  you'll  give  me  one, — only  one  !  " 

"  Will  you  learn  your  lesson  if  I  do,  Fanny !  " 

"  Oh  !  yes  !     Wait  a  moment !  " 

And  Fanny  stole  back  to  her  desk,  put  the  hateful  book  reso- 
lutely before  her,  pressed  both  hands  tightly  on  her  temples, — 
Eureka  !  the  chord  was  touched  ;  and  Fanny  marched  in  triumph 
through  half  a  column  of  hostile  double-syllables  ! 

From  that  day  the  schoolmistress  knew  how  to  stimulate  her, 
and  Fanny  learned  to  read :  her  path  to  knowledge  thus  literally 
strewn  with  flowers  !  Catherine,  thy  children  were  far  off,  and 
thy  grave  looked  gay  ! 

It  naturally  happened  that  those  short  and  simple  rhymes,  often 
sacred,  which  are  repeated  in  schools  as  helps  to  memory,  made 
a  part  of  her  studies ;  and  no  sooner  had  the  sound  of  verse  struck 
upon  her  fancy  than  it  seemed  to  confuse  and  agitate  anew  all 
her  senses.  It  was  like  the  music  of  some  breeze,  to  which  dance 
and  tremble  all  the  young  leaves  of  a  wild  plant.  Even  when  at 
the  convent  she  had  been  fond  of  repeating  the  infant  rhymes 
with  which  they  had  sought  to  lull,  or  to  amuse  her,  but  now  the 
taste  was  more  strongly  developed.  She  confounded,  however, 
in  meaningless  and  motley  disorder,  the  various  snatches  of  song 
that  came  to  her  ear,  weaving  them  together  in  some  form  whicl 
she  understood,  but  which  was  jargon  to  all  others;  and  often,  as 
she  went  alone  through  the  green  lanes  or  the  bustling  streets,  the 
passenger  would  turn  in  pity  and  fear  to  hear  her  half-chant,  half- 
murmur  ditties  that  seemed  to  suit  only  a  wandering  and  unsettled 
imagination.  And  as  Mrs.  Boxer,  in  her  visits  to  the  various 
shops  in  the  suburb,  took  care  to  bemoan  her  hard  fate  in  attend- 
ing to  a  creature  so  evidently  moon -stricken,  it  was  no  wonder 
that  the  manner  and  habits  of  the  child,  coupled  with  that  strange 
predilection  to  haunt  the  burial-ground,  which  is  not  uncommon 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  259 

with  persons  of  weak  and  disordered  intellect,  confirmed  the  char- 
acter thus  given  to  her. 

So,  as  she  tripped  gaily  and  lightly  along  the  thoroughfares, 
the  children  would  draw  aside  from  her  path,  and  whisper,  with 
superstitious  fear  mingled  with  contempt :  "It's  the  idiot  girl  !  " 
Idiot !  How  much  more  of  Heaven's  light  was  there  in  that  cloud 
than  in  the  rushlights  that,  flickering  in  sordid  chambers,  shed  on 
dull  things  the  dull  ray — esteeming  themselves  as  stars  ! 

Months — years — passed.  Fanny  was  thirteen,  when  there 
dawned  a  new  era  to  her  existence.  Mrs.  Boxer  had  never  got 
over  her  first  grudge  to  Fanny.  Her  treatment  of  the  poor  girl 
was  always  harsh,  and  sometimes  cruel.  But  Fanny  did  not  com- 
plain ;  and  as  Mrs.  Boxer's  manner  to  her  before  Simon  was 
invariably  cringing  and  caressing,  the  old  man  never  guessed  the 
hardships  his  supposed  grandchild  underwent.  There  had  been 
scandal  some  years  back  in  the  suburb  about  the  relative  connec- 
tion of  the  master  and  the  housekeeper ;  and  the  flaunting  dress 
of  the  latter,  something  bold  in  her  regard,  and  certain  whispers 
that  her  youth  had  not  been  vowed  to  Vesta,  confirmed  the  sus- 
picion. The  only  reason  why  we  do  not  feel  sure  that  the  rumor 
was  false  is  this, — Simon  Gawtrey  had  been  so  hard  on  the  early 
follies  of  his  son  !  Certainly,  at  all  events,  the  woman  had  exer- 
cised great  influence  over  the  miser  before  the  arrival  of  Fanny, 
and  she  had  done  much  to  steel  his  selfishness  against  the  ill-fated 
William.  And,  as  certainly,  she  had  fully  calculated  on  succeed- 
ing to  the  savings,  whatever  they  might  be,  of  the  miser,  when- 
ever Providence  should  be  pleased  to  terminate  his  days.  She 
knew  that  Simon  had,  many  years  back,  made  his  will  in  her 
favor  ;  she  knew  that  he  had  not  altered  that  will :  she  believed, 
therefore,  that  in  spite  of  all  his  love  for  Fanny,  he  loved  his  gold 
so  much  more,  that  he  could  not  accustom  himself  to  the 
thoughts  of  bequeathing  it  to  hands  too  helpless  to  guard  the 
treasure.  This  had  in  some  measure  reconciled  the  housekeeper 
to  the  intruder ;  whom,  nevertheless,  she  hated  as  a  dog  hates 
another  dog,  not  only  for  taking  his  bone,  but  for  looking  at  it. 

But  suddenly  Simon  fell  ill.  His  age  made  it  probable  he 
would  die.  He  took  to  his  bed  ;  his  breathing  grew  fainter  and 
fainter ;  he  seemed  dead.  Fanny,  all  unconscious,  sat  by  his 
bedside  as  usual,  holding  her  breath  not  to  waken  him.  Mrs. 
Boxer  flew  to  the  bureau ;  she  unlocked  it — she  could  not  find  the 
will ;  but  she  found  three  bags  of  bright  old  guineas :  the  sight 
charmed  her.  She  tumbled  them  forth  on  the  distained  green 
cloth  of  the  bureau- — she  began  to  count  them ;  and  at  that 
jnoment,  the  old  man,  as  if  there  were  a  secret  magnetism 


260  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

between  himself  and  the  guineas,  woke  from  his  trance.  His 
blindness  saved  him  the  pain  that  might  have  been  fatal,  of  seeing 
the  unhallowed  profanation  ;  but  he  heard  the  chink  of  the  metal. 
The  very  sound  restored  his  strength.  But  the  infirm  are  always 
cunning — he  breathed  not  a  suspicion.  "  Mrs.  Boxer,"  said  he, 
faintly,  "  I  think  I  could  take  some  broth."  Mrs.  Boxer  rose  in 
great  dismay,  gently  reclosed  the  bureau,  and  ran  down  stairs  for 
the  broth.  Simon  took  the  occasion  to  question  Fanny  ;  and  no 
sooner  had  he  learnt  the  operation  of  the  heir-expectant,  than  he 
bade  the  girl  first  lock  the  bureau  and  bring  him  the  key,  and 
next  run  to  a  lawyer  (whose  address  he  gave  her),  and  fetch  him 
instantly. 

With  a  malignant  smile  the  old  man  took  the  broth  from  his 
hand-maid:  "Poor  Boxer,  you  are  a  disinterested  creature," 
said  he,  feebly ;  "I  think  you  will  grieve  when  I  go." 

Mrs.  Boxer  sobbed;  and  before  she  had  recovered,  the  lawyer 
entered.  That  day  a  new  will  was  made ;  and  the  lawyer  politely 
informed  Mrs.  Boxer  that  her  services  would  be  dispensed  with 
the  next  morning,  when  he  should  bring  a  nurse  to  the  house. 
Mrs.  Boxer  heard,  and  took  her  resolution.  As  soon  as  Simon 
again  fell  asleep,  she  crept  into  the  room;  led  away  Fanny; 
locked  her  up  in  her  own  chamber ;  returned  ;  searched  for  the 
key  of  the  bureau,  which  she  found  at  last  under  Simon's  pillow, 
possessed  herself  of  all  she  could  lay  her  hands  on ;  and  the  next 
morning  she  had  disappeared  forever  !  Simon's  loss  was  greater 
than  might  have  been  supposed;  for,  except  a  trifling  sum  in  the 
Savings'  Bank,  he,  like  many  other  misers,  kept  all  he  had,  in 
notes  or  specie,  under  his  own  lock  and  key.  His  whole  fortune, 
indeed,  was  far  less  than  was  supposed ;  for  money  does  not  make 
money  unless  it  is  put  out  to  interest, — and  the  miser  cheated 
himself.  Such  portion  as  was  in  banknotes  Mrs.  Boxer  probably 
had  the  prudence  to  destroy ;  for  those  numbers  which  Simon 
could  remember  were  never  traced ;  the  gold,  who  could  swear 
to?  Except  the  pittance  in  the  Savings'  Bank,  and  whatever 
might  be  the  paltry  worth  of  the  house  he  rented,  the  father  who 
had  enriched  the  menial  to  exile  the  son  was  a  beggar  in  his  dot- 
age. This  news,  however,  was  carefully  concealed  from  him  by 
the  advice  of  the  doctor,  whom,  on  his  own  responsibility,  the 
lawyer  introduced,  till  he  had  recovered  sufficiently  to  bear  the 
shock  without  danger ;  and  the  delay  naturally  favored  Mrs.  Box- 
er's escape. 

Simon  remained  for  some  moments  perfectly  stunned  and 
speechless  when  the  news  was  broken  to  him.  Fanny,  in  alarm 
at  his  increasing  paleness,  sprang  to  his  breast.  He  pushed  her 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  261 

away  :  "  Go — go — go,  child,"  he  said;  "  I  can't  feed  you  now. 
Leave  me  to  starve. ' ' 

"  To  starve  !  "  said  Fanny,  wonderingly  ;  and  she  stole  away, 
and  sat  herself  down  as  if  in  deep  thought.  She  then  crept  up 
to  the  lawyer  as  he  was  about  to  leave  the  room,  after  exhausting 
his  stock  of  common-place  consolation ;  and  putting  her  hand  in 
his,  whispered:  "I  want  to  talk  to  you — this  way."  She  led 
him  through  the  passage  into  the  open  air.  "Tell  me,"  she  said, 
"  when  poor  people  try  not  to  starve,  don't  they  work?  " 

"My  dear,  yes." 

"  For  rich  people  buy  poor  people's  work?  " 

"Certainly,  my  dear;  to  be  sure." 

"Very  well.  Mrs.  Boxer  used  to  sell  my  work.  Fanny  will 
feed  grandpapa  !  Go  and  tell  him  never  to  say  '  starve '  again." 

The  good-natured  lawyer  was  moved.  "  Can  you  work,  indeed, 
my  poor  girl  ?  Well,  put  on  your  bonnet,  and  come  and  talk  to 
my  wife." 

And  that  was  the  new  era  in  Fanny's  existence  !  Her  school- 
ing was  stopped.  But  now  life  schooled  her.  Necessity  ripened 
her  intellect.  And  many  a  hard  eye  moistened,  as  seeing  her 
glide  with  her  little  basket  of  fancy  work  along  the  streets,  slill 
murmuring  her  happy  and  birdlike  snatches  of  unconnected  song, 
men  and  children  alike  said  with  respect,  in  which  there  was  now 
no  contempt :  "  It's  the  idiot  girl  who  supports  her  blind  grand- 
father !" 

They  called  her  idiot  still ! 

BOOK  IV. 


CHAPTER  I. 

"  Oh,  that  sweet  gleam  of  sunshine  on  the  lake !  " 

WILSON'S  City  of  the  Plague. 

IF,  reader,  you  have  ever  looked  through  a  solar  microscope  at 
the  monsters  in  a  drop  of  water,  perhaps  you  have  wondered  to 
yourself  how  things  so  terrible  have  been  hitherto  unknown  to 
you  ;  you  have  felt  a  loathing  at  the  limpid  element  you  hitherto 
deemed  so  pure ;  you  have  half  fancied  that  you  would  cease  to 
be  a  water-drinker;  yet,  the  next  day,  you  have  forgotten  the 
grim  life  that  started  before  you,  with  its  countless  shapes,  in  that 
teeming  globule  ;  and,  if  so  tempted  by  your  thirst,  you  have  not 


262  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

shrunk  from  the  lying  crystal,  although  myriads  of  the  horrible 
Unseen  are  mangling,  devouring,  gorging  each  other,  in  the  liquid 
you  so  tranquilly  imbibe  ;  so  is  it  with  that  ancestral  and  master 
element  called  Life.  Lapped  in  your  sleek  comforts,  and  lolling 
on  the  sofa  of  your  patent  conscience,  when,  perhaps  for  the  first 
time,  you  look  through  the  glass  of  science  upon  one  ghastly 
globule  in  the  waters  that  heave  around,  that  fill  up,  with  their 
succulence,  the  pores  of  earth,  that  moisten  every  atom  subject  to 
your  eyes,  or  handled  by  your  touch,  you  are  startled  and  dis- 
mayed ;  you  say,  mentally,  "  Can  such  things  be?  I  never 
dreamed  of  this  before !  I  thought  what  was  invisible  to  me  was 
non-existent  in  itself.  I  will  remember  this  dread  experiment." 
The  next  day  the  experiment  is  forgotten.  The  Chemist  may 
purify  the  Globule — can  Science  make  pure  the  World  ? 

Turn  we  now  to  the  pleasant  surface,  seen  in  the  whole,  broad 
and  fair  to  the  common  eye.  Who  would  judge  well  of  God's 
great  designs,  if  he  could  look  on  no  drop  pendent  from  the  rose- 
tree,  or  sparkling  in  the  sun,  without  the  help  of  his  solar  micro- 
scope ? 

It  is  ten  years  after  the  night  on  which  William  Gawtrey  per- 
ished :  I  transport  you,  reader,  to  the  fairest  scenes  in  England, — 
scenes  consecrated,  by  the  only  true  pastoral  poetry  we  have 
known,  to  Contemplation  and  Repose. 

Autumn  had  begun  to  tinge  the  foliage  on  the  banks  of  Winan- 
dermere.  It  had  been  a  summer  of  unusual  warmth  and  beauty  ; 
and  if  that  year  you  had  visited  the  English  lakes,  you  might, 
from  time  to  time,  amidst  the  groups  of  happy  idlers  you  encoun- 
tered, have  singled  out  two  persons  for  interest,  or,  perhaps,  for 
envy.  Two  who  might  have  seemed  to  you  in  peculiar  harmony 
with  those  serene  and  soft  retreats,  both  young — both  beautiful. 
Lovers  you  would  have  guessed  them  to  be ;  but  such  lovers  as 
Fletcher  might  have  placed  under  the  care  of  his  "Holy  Shep- 
herdess"— forms  that  might  have  reclined  by 

"  The  Virtuous  well,  about  whose  flowery  banks 
The  nimble-footed  fairies  dance  their  rounds 
By  the  pale  moonshine." 

For  in  the  love  of  those  persons  there  seemed  a  purity  and  inno- 
cence that  suited  well  their  youth  and  the  character  of  their 
beauty.  Perhaps,  indeed,  on  the  girl's  side,  love  sprung  rather 
from  those  affections  which  the  spring  of  life  throws  upward  to  the 
surface  j  as  the  spring  of  earth  does  its  flowers,  than  from  that 
concentrated  and  deep  absorption  of  self  in  self,  which  alone 
promises  endurance  and  devotion,  and  pf  which  first  love,  07 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  263 

rather  the  first  fancy,  is  often  less  susceptible  than  that  which 
grows  out  of  the  more  thoughtful  fondness  of  maturer  years.  Yet 
he,  the  lover,  was  of  so  rare  and  singular  a  beauty,  that  he 
might  well  seem  calculated  to  awaken,  to  the  utmost,  the  love 
which  wins  the  heart  through  the  eyes. 

But  to  begin  at  the  beginning.  A  lady  of  fashion  had,  in  the 
autumn  previous  to  the  year  on  which  our  narrative  re-opens, 
taken,  with  her  daughter,  a  girl  then  of  about  eighteen,  the  tour 
of  the  English  lakes.  Charmed  by  the  beauty  of  Winandermere, 
and  finding  one  of  the  most  commodious  villas  on  its  banks  to  be 
let,  they  had  remained  there  all  the  winter.  In  the  early  spring 
a  severe  illness  had  seized  the  elder  lady,  and  finding  herself,  as 
she  slowly  recovered,  unfit  for  the  gaieties  of  a  London  season, 
nor  unwilling,  perhaps, — for  she  had  been  a  beauty  in  her  day — 
to  postpone  for  another  year  the  debut  of  her  daughter,  she  had 
continued  her  sojourn,  with  short  intervals  of  absence,  for  a  whole 
year.  Her  husband,  a  busy  man  of  the  world,  with  occupation 
in  London,  and  fine  estates  in  the  country,  joined  them  only 
occasionally,  glad  to  escape  the  still  beauty  of  landscapes,  which 
brought  him  no  rental,  and  therefore  afforded  no  charm  to  his 
eye. 

In  the  first  month  of  their  arrival  at  Winandermere  the  mother 
and  daughter  had  made  an  eventful  acquaintance  in  the  following 
manner : 

One  evening,  as  they  were  walking  on  their  lawn,  which  sloped 
to  the  lake,  they  heard  the  sound  of  a  flute,  played  with  a  skill  so 
exquisite  as  to  draw  them,  surprised  and  spellbound,  to  the  banks. 
The  musician  was  a  young  man,  in  a  boat,  which  he  had  moored 
beneath  the  trees  of  their  demesne.  He  was  alone,  or,  rather,  he 
had  one  companion,  in  a  large  Newfoundland  dog,  that  sat  watch- 
ful at  the  helm  of  the  boat,  and  appeared  to  enjoy  the  music  as 
much  as  his  master.  As  the  ladies  approached  the  spot  the  dog 
growled,  and  the  young  man  ceased,  though  without  seeing  the 
fair  causes  of  his  companion's  displeasure.  The  sun,  then  setting, 
shone  full  on  his  countenance  as  he  looked  round ;  and  that  coun- 
tenance was  one  that  might  have  haunted  the  nymphs  of  Delos ; 
the  face  of  Apollo,  not  as  the  hero,  but  the  shepherd ;  not  01'  the 
bow,  but  of  the  lute  ;  not  of  Python-slayer,  but  the  young  dreamer 
by  shady  places — he  whom  the  sculptor  has  portrayed  leaning  idly 
against  the  tree — the  boy-god  whose  home  is  yet  on  earth,  and  to 
whom  the  Oracle  and  the  Spheres  are  still  unknown. 

At  that  moment  the  dog  leaped  from  the  boat,  and  the  elder 
lady  uttered  a  faint  cry  of  alarm,  which,  directing  the  attention 
of  the  musician,  brought  him  also  ashore.  He  called  off  his  dog, 


264  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

and  apologized  with  a  not  ungraceful  mixture  of  diffidence  and  ease, 
for  his  intrusion.  He  was  not  aware  the  place  was  inhabited  ;  it 
was  a  favorite  haunt  of  his — he  lived  near  The  elder  lady  was 
pleased  with  his  address,  and  struck  with  his  appearance.  There 
was,  indeed,  in  his  manner  that  indefinable  charm  which  is  more 
attractive  than  mere  personal  appearance,  and,  which  can  never  be 
imitated  or  acquired.  They  parted,  however,  without  establish- 
ing any  formal  acquaintance.  A  few  days  after  they  met  at  din- 
ner at  a  neighboring  house,  and  were  introduced  by  name.  That 
of  the  young  man  seemed  strange  to  the  ladies ;  not  so  theirs  to 
him.  He  turned  pale  when  he  heard  it,  and  remained  silent  and 
aloof  the  rest  of  the  evening.  They  met  again  and  often  ;  and  for 
some  weeks — nay,  even  for  months — he  appeared  to  avoid,  as 
much  as  possible,  the  acquaintance  so  auspiciously  begun  ;  but  by 
little  and  little  the  beauty  of  the  younger  lady  seemed  to  gain 
ground  on  his  diffidence  or  repugnance.  Excursions  among  the 
neighboring  mountains  threw  them  together,  and  at  last  he  fairly 
surrendered  himself  to  the  charm  he  had  at  first  determined  to 
resist. 

This  young  man  lived  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  lake,  in  a 
quiet  household,  of  which  he  was  the  idol.  His  life  had  been  one 
of  almost  monastic  purity  and  repose ;  his  tastes  were  accomplish- 
ed, his  character  seemed  soft  and  gentle;  but  beneath  that  calm 
exterior,  flashes  of  passion — the  nature  of  the  poet,  ardent  and 
sensitive — would  break  forth  at  times.  He  had  scarcely  ever, 
since  his  earliest  childhood,  quitted  those  retreats ;  he  knew  noth- 
ing of  the  world,  except  in  books — books  of  poetry  and  romance. 
Those  with  whom  he  lived — his  relations,  an  old  bachelor,  and 
the  old  bachelor's  sisters,  old  maids — seemed  equally  innocent  and 
inexperienced.  It  was  a  family  whom  the  rich  respected,  and  the 
poor  loved — inoffensive,  charitable,  and  well  off.  To  whatever 
their  easy  fortune  might  be,  he  appeared  the  heir.  The  name  of 
this  young  man  was  Charles  Spencer;  the  ladies  were  Mrs.  Beau- 
fort, and  Camilla  her  daughter. 

Mrs.  Beaufort,  though  a  shrewd  woman,  did  not  at  first  per- 
ceive any  danger  in  the  growing  intimacy  between  Camilla  and 
the  younger  Spencer.  Her  daughter  was  not  her  favorite — not 
the  object  of  her  one  thought  or  ambition.  Her  whole  heart  and 
soul  were  wrapped  up  in  her  son  Arthur,  who  lived  principally 
abroad.  Clever  enough  to  be  considered  capable,  when  he  pleased, 
of  achieving  distinction,  good-looking  enough  to  be  thought  hand- 
some by  all  who  were  on  the  qui  vive  for  an  advantageous  match, 
good-natured  enough  to  be  popular  with  the  society  in  which  he 
lived,  scattering  to  and  fro  money  without  limit, — Arthur  Beau- 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  265 

fort,  at  the  age  of  thirty,  had  established  one  of  those  brilliant 
and  evanescent  reputations,  which,  for  a  few  years,  reward  the 
ambition  of  the  fine  gentleman.  It  was  precisely  the  reputation 
that  the  mother  could  appreciate,  and  which  even  the  more  sav- 
ing father  secretly  admired,  while,  ever  respectable  in  phrase,  Mr. 
Robert  Beaufort  seemed  openly  to  regret  it.  This  son  was,  I  say, 
everything  to  them;  they  cared  little,  in  comparison,  for  their 
daughter.  How  could  a  daughter  keep  up  the  proud  name  of 
Beaufort?  However  well  she  might  marry,  it  was  another  house, 
not  theirs,  which  her  graces  and  beauty  would  adorn.  Moreover, 
the  better  she  might  marry,  the  greater  her  dowry  would  natur- 
ally be, — the  dowry,  to  go  out  of  the  family  !  And  Arthur,  poor 
fellow !  was  so  extravagant,  that  really  he  would  want  every  six- 
pence. Such  was  the  reasoning  of  the  father.  The  mother  rea- 
soned less  upon  the  matter.  Mrs.  Beaufort,  faded  and  meagre, 
in  blonde  and  cachemere,  was  jealous  of  the  charms  of  her  daugh- 
ter :  and  she  herself,  growing  sentimental  and  lachrymose  as  she 
advanced  in  life,  as  silly  women  often  do,  had  convinced  herself 
that  Camilla  was  a  girl  of  no  feeling. 

Miss  Beaufort  was,  indeed,  of  a  character  singularly  calm  and 
placid ;  it  was  the  character  that  charms  men  in  proportion,  per- 
haps, to  their  own  strength  and  passion.  She  had  been  rigidly 
brought  up ;  her  affections  had  been  very  early  chilled  and  sub- 
dued ;  they  moved,  therefore,  now,  with  ease,  in  the  serene  path 
of  her  duties.  She  held  her  parents,  especially  her  father,  in  rev- 
erential fear,  and  never  dreamed  of  the  possibility  of  resisting  one 
of  their  wishes,  much  less  their  commands.  Pious,  kind,  gentle, 
of  a  fine  and  never-ruffled  temper,  Camilla,  an  admirable  daugh- 
ter, was  likely  to  make  no  less  admirable  a  wife ;  you  might 
depend  on  her  principles,  if  ever  you  could  doubt  her  affection. 
Few  girls  were  more  calculated  to  inspire  love.  You  would 
scarcely  wonder  at  any  folly,  any  madness,  which  even  .a  wise 
man  might  commit  for  her  sake.  This  did  not  depend  on  her 
beauty  alone,  though  she  was  extremely  lovely  rather  than  hand- 
some, and  of  that  style  of  loveliness  which  is  universally  fascinat- 
ing :  the  figure,  especially  as  to  the  arms,  throat,  and  bust,  was 
exquisite;  the  mouth  dimpled;  the  teeth  dazzling ;  the  eyes  of 
that  velvet  softness  which  to  look  on  is  to  love.  But  her  charm 
was  in  a  certain  prettiness  of  manner,  an  exceeding  innocence, 
mixed  with  the  most  captivating,  because  unconscious,  coquetry. 
With  all  this,  there  was  a  freshness,  a  joy,  a  virgin  and  bewitch- 
ing candor  in  her  voice,  her  laugh — you  might  almost  say  in  her 
very  movements.  Such  was  Camilla  Beaufort  at  that  age.  Such 
she  seemed  to  others.  To  her  parents  she  was  only  a  great  girl 


266  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

rather  in  the  way.     To  Mrs.  Beaufort  a  rival,  to  Mr.  Beaufort  an 
incumbrance  on  the  property. 


CHAPTER  II. 

*  *  *  The  moon 
Saddening  the  solemn  night,  yet  with  that  sadness 
Mingling  the  breath  of  undisturbed  Peace." 

Wil^ON :   City  of  the  Plague, 

*  *  *  «  Tell  me  his  fate. 
Say  that  he  lives,  or  say  that  he  is  dead, 
But  tell  me — tell  me ! — 
****** 

I  see  him  not — some  cloud  envelops  him." — Ibid, 

ONE  day  (nearly  a  year  after  their  first  introduction)  as  with  a 
party  of  friends  Camilla  and  Charles  Spencer  were  riding  through 
those  wild  and  romantic  scenes  which  lie  between  the  sunny  Win- 
andermere  and  the  dark  and  sullen  Wastwater,  their  conversation 
fell  on  topics  more  personal  than  it  had  hitherto  done,  for  as  yet, 
if  they  felt  love,  they  had  never  spoken  of  it. 

The  narrowness  of  the  path  allowed  only  two  to  ride  abreast, 
and  the  two  to  whom  I  confine  my  description  were  the  last  of  the 
little  band. 

"  How  I  wish  Arthur  were  here  !  "  said  Camilla ;  "  I  am  sure 
you  would  like  him." 

' '  Are  you  ?  He  lives  much  in  the  world — the  world  of  which-I 
know  nothing.  Are  we  then  characters  to  suit  each  other?  " 

"He  is  the  kindest,  the  best  of  human  beings  !  "  said  Camilla, 
rather  evasively,  but  with  more  warmth  than  usually  dwelt  in  her 
soft  and  low  voice. 

"  Is  he  so  kind  ? T>  returned  Spencer,  musingly.  "Well,  it  may 
be  so.  And  who  would  not  be  kind  to  you  ?  Ah  !  it  is  a  beauti- 
ful connection  that  of  brother  and  sister — I  never  had  a  sister  !  " 

"Have  you  then  a  brother?"  asked  Camilla,  in  some  surprise, 
and  turning  her  ingenuous  eyes  full  on  her  companion. 

Spencer's  color  rose — rose  to  his  temples :  his  voice  trembled 
as  he  answered:  "  No — no  brother  !  "  then,  speaking  in  a  rapid 
and  hurried  tone,  he  continued:  "My  life  has  been  a  strange 
and  lonely  one.  I  am  an  orphan.  I  have  mixed  with  few  of  my 
own  age :  my  boyhood  and  youth  have  been  spent  in  these  scenes  ; 
my  education  such  as  Nature  and  books  could  bestow,  with 
scarcely  any  guide  or  tutor  save  my  guardian — the  dear  old  man  ! 
Thus  the  world,  the  stir  of  cities,  ambition,  enterprise,  all  seem  to 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  267 

me  as  things  belonging  to  a  distant  land  to  which  I  shall  never 
wander.  Yet  I  have  had  my  dreams,  Miss  Beaufort;  dreams  of 
which  these  solitudes  still  form  a  part — but  solitudes  not  unshared. 
And  lately  I  have  thought  that  those  dreams  might  be  prophetic. 
And  you — do  you  love  the  world  ?  " 

"  I,  like  you,  have  scarcely  tried  it,"  said  Camilla,  with  a 
sweet  laugh.  "  But  I  love  the  country  better, — oh !  far  better 
than  what  little  I  have  seen  of  towns.  But  for  you,"  she  con- 
tinued, with  a  charming  hesitation,  "  a  man  is  so  different  from 
us, — for  you  to  shrink  from  the  world — you,  so  young  and  with 
talent  too — Nay.  it  is  true ! — it  seems  to  me  strange." 

"It  may  be  so,  but  I  cannot  tell  you  what  feelings  of  dread, 
what  vague  forebodings  of  terror  seize  me  if  I  carry  my  thoughts 
beyond  these  retreats.  Perhaps,  my  good  guardian — " 

"  Your  uncle  ?  "  interrupted  Camilla. 

"  Ay,  my  uncle,  may  have  contributed  to  engender  feelings,  as 
you  say,  strange  at  my  age ;  but  still — " 

"  Still  what !  " 

"My  earlier  childhood,"  continued  Spencer,  breathing  hard 
and  turning  pale,  "  was  not  spent  in  the  happy  home  I  have  now  ; 
it  was  passed  in  a  premature  ordeal  of  suffering  and  pain.  Its 
recollections  have  left  a  dark  shadow  on  my  mind,  and  under  that 
shadow  lies  every  thought  that  points  towards  the  troublous  and 
laboring  career  of  other  men.  But,"  he  resumed  after  a  pause, 
and  in  a  deep,  earnest,  almost  solemn  voice, — "but,  after  all,  is 
this  cowardice  or  wisdom?  I  find  no  monotony,  no  tedium  in 
this  quiet  life.  Is  there  not  a  certain  morality,  a  certain  religion 
in  the  spirit  of  a  secluded  and  country  existence  ?  In  it  we  do  not 
know  the  evil  passions  which  ambition  and  strife  are  said  to 
arouse.  I  never  feel  jealous  or  envious  of  other  men ;  I  never 
know  what  it  is  to  hate ;  my  boat,  my  horse,  our  garden,  music, 
books,  and,  if  I  may  dare  to  say  so,  the  solemn  gladness  that  comes 
from  the  hopes  of  another  life, — these  fill  up  every  hour  with 
thoughts  and  pursuits,  peaceful,  happy,  and  without  a  cloud,  till 
of  late,  when — when — " 

"When  what?"  said  Camilla,  innocently. 

"  When  I  have  longed,  but  did  not  dare  to  ask  another,  if  to 
share  such  a  lot  would  content  her  !  " 

He  bent,  as  he  spoke,  his  soft  blue  eyes  full  upon  the  blushing 
face  of  her  whom  he  addressed,  and  Camilla  half  smiled  and  half 
sighed : 

"Our  companions  are  far  before  us,"  said  she,  turning  away 
her  face,  "and  see,  the  road  is  now  smooth."  She  quickened 
her  horse's  pace  as  she  said  this;  and  Spencer,  too  new  to  women 


268  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

to  interpret  favorably  her  evasion  of  his  words  and  looks,  fell  into 
a  profound  silence  which  lasted  during  the  rest  of  their  excursion. 

As  towards  the  decline  of  day  he  bent  his  solitary  way  home, 
emotions  and  passions  to  which  his  life  had  hitherto  been  a 
stranger,  and  which,  alas  !  he  had  vainly  imagined  a  life  so  tran- 
quil would  everlastingly  restrain,  swelled  his  heart. 

"  She  does  not  love  me,"  he  muttered,  half- aloud ;  "  she  will 
leave  me,  and  what  then  will  all  the  beauty  of  the  landscape  seem 
in  my  eyes?  And  how  dare  I  look  up  to  her?  Even  if  her  cold, 
vain  mother — her  father,  the  man,  they  say,  of  forms  and  scruples, 
were  to  consent,  would  they  not  question  closely  of  my  true  birth 
and  origin?  And  if  the  one  blot  were  overlooked,  is  there  no 
other  ?  His  early  habits  and  vices,  his  ! — a  brother's — his  un- 
known career  terminating  at  any  day,  perhaps,  in  shame,  in  crirae, 
in  exposure,  in  the  gibbet, — will  they  overlook  this?"  As  he 
spoke,  he  groaned  aloud,  and,  as  if  impatient  to  escape  himself, 
spurred  on  his  horse  and  rested  not  till  he  reached  the  belt  of  trim 
and  sober  evergreens  that  surrounded  his  hitherto  happy  home. 

Leaving  his  horse  to  find  its  way  to  the  stables,  the  young  man 
passed  through  rooms  which  he  found  deserted,  to  the  lawn  on 
the  other  side,  which  sloped  to  the  smooth  waters  of  the  lake. 

Here,  seated  under  the  one  large  tree  that  formed  the  pride  of 
the  lawn,  over  which  it  cast  its  shadow  broad  and  far,  he  per- 
ceived his  guardian  poring  idly  over  an  oft-read  book,  one  of  those 
books  of  which  literary  dreamers  are  apt  to  grow  fanatically  fond — 
books  by  the  old  English  writers,  full  of  phrases  and  conceits  half- 
quaint  and  half-sublime,  interspersed  with  praises  of  the  country, 
imbued  v/ith  a  poetical  rather  than  orthodox  religion,  and  adorned 
with  a  strange  mixture  of  monastic  learning  and  aphorisms  col- 
lected from  the  weary  experience  of  actual  life. 

To  the  left,  by  a  green-house,  built  between  the  house  and  the 
lake,  might  be  seen  the  white  dress  and  lean  form  of  the  eldest 
spinster  sister,  to  whom  the  care  of  the  flowers — for  she  had  been 
early  crossed  in  love — was  consigned  ;  at  a  little  distance  from 
her,  the  other  two  were  seated  at  work,  and  conversing  in  whis- 
pers, not  to  disturb  their  studious  brother,  no  doubt  upon  the 
nephew,  who  was  their  all  in  all.  It  was  the  calmest  hour  of  eve, 
and  the  quiet  of  the  several  forms,  their  simple  and  harmless 
occupations — if  occupations  they  might  be  called — the  breathless 
foliage  rich  in  the  depth  of  summer  ;  behind,  the  old-fashioned 
house,  unpretending,  not  mean,  its  open  doors  and  windows  giv- 
ing glimpses  of  the  comfortable  repose  within ;  before,  the  lake, 
without  a  ripple  and  catching  the  gleam  of  the  sunset  clouds, — 
all  made  a  picture  of  that  complete  tranquillity  and  stillness, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  269 

which  sometimes  soothes  and  sometimes  saddens  us,  according  as 
we  are  in  the  temper  to  woo  CONTENT. 

The  young  man  glided  to  his  guardian  and  touched  his  shoul- 
der :  ' '  Sir,  may  I  speak  to  you  ?  Hush !  they  need  not  see  us 
now  !  It  is  only  you  I  would  speak  with." 

The  elder  Spencer  rose ;  and,  with  his  book  still  in  his  hand, 
moved  side  by  side  with  his  nephew  under  the  shadow  of  the  tree 
and  towards  a  walk  to  the  right,  which  led  for  a  short  distance 
along  the  margin  of  the  lake,  backed  by  the  interlaced  boughs  of 
a  thick  copse. 

"  Sir  !  "  said  the  young  man,  speaking  first,  and  with  a  visible 
effort,  "  your  cautions  have  been  in  vain  !  I  love  this  girl — this 
daughter  of  the  haughty  Beauforts  !  I  love  her — better  than  life 
I  love  her !  " 

"  My  poor  boy,"  said  the  uncle  tenderly,  and  with  a  simple 
fondness  passing  his  arm  over  the  speaker's  shoulder,  "do  not 
think  I  can  chide  you.  I  know  what  it  is  to  love  in  vain !  " 

"  In  vain  !  But  why  in  vain  ?  "  exclaimed  the  younger  Spen- 
cer, with  a  vehemence  that  had  in  it  something  of  both  agony 
and  fierceness.  "  She  may  love  me — she  shall  love  me  !  "  and 
almost  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  the  proud  consciousness  of  his 
rare  gifts  of  person  spoke  in  his  kindled  eye  and  dilated  stature. 
' '  Do  they  not  say  that  Nature  has  been  favorable  to  me  ?  What 
rival  have  I  here  ?  Is  she  not  young  ?  And  (sinking  his  voice 
till  it  almost  breathed  like  music)  is  not  love  contagious?  " 

" I  do  not  doubt  that  she  may  love  you — who  would  not?  But 
— but — the  parents,  will  they  ever  consent?" 

"Nay!"  answered  the  lover,  as  with  that  inconsistency  com- 
mon to  passion,  he  now  argued  stubbornly  against  those  fears  in 
another  to  which  he  had  just  before  yielded  in  himself, — "  Nay  ! 
— after  all,  am  I  not  of  their  own  blood  ?  Do  I  not  come  from 
the  elder  branch  ?  Was  I  not  reared  in  equal  luxury  and  with 
higher  hopes?  And  my  mother — my  poor  mother — did  she  not 
to  the  last  maintain  our  birthright — her  own  honor?  Has  not 
accident  or  law  unjustly  stripped  us  of  our  true  station  ?  Is  it 
not  for  us  to  forgive  spoliation  ?  Am  I  not,  in  fact,  the  person 
who  descends,  who  forgets  the  wrongs  of  the  dead — the  heritage 
of  the  living?" 

The  young  man  had  never  yet  assumed  this  tone — had  never 
yet  shown  that  he  looked  back  to  the  history  connected  with  his 
birth  with  the  feelings  of  resentment  and  the  remembrance  of 
wrong.  It  was  a  tone  contrary  to  his  habitual  calm  and  con- 
tentment ;  it  struck  forcibly  on  his  listener,  and  the  elder  Spencer 
was  silent  for  some  moments  before  he  replied :  "If  you  feel 


270  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

thus  (and  it  is  natural),  you  have  yet  stronger  reason  to  struggle 
against  this  unhappy  affection." 

"I  have  been  conscious  of  that,  sir,"  replied  the  young  man, 
mournfully.  "  I  have  struggled  !  And  I  say  again  it  is  in  vain  ! 
I  turn,  then,  to  face  the  obstacles  !  My  birth — let  us  suppose 
that  the  Beauforts  overlook  it.  Did  you  not  tell  me  that  Mr. 
Beaufort  wrote  to  inform  you  of  the  abrupt  and  intemperate  visit 
of  my  brother — of  his  determination  never  to  forgive  it  ?  I  think 
I  remember  something  of  this  years  ago." 

"It  is  true!"  said  the  guardian;  ' '  and  the  conduct  of  that 
brother  is,  in  fact,  the  true  cause  why  you  never  ought  to  reas- 
sume  your  proper  name ! — never  to  divulge  it,  even  to  the  family 
with  whom  you  connect  yourself  by  marriage ;  but,  above  all,  to 
the  Beauforts,  who  for  that  cause,  if  that  cause  alone,  would  reject 
your  suit." 

The  young  man  groaned ;  placed  one  hand  before  his  eyes, 
and  with  the  other  grasped  his  guardian's  arm  convulsively,  as  if 
to  check  him  from  proceeding  farther;  but  the  good  man,  not 
divining  his  meaning,  and  absorbed  in  his  subject,  went  on,  irri- 
tating the  wound  he  had  touched. 

"Reflect!  Your  brother  in  boyhood — in  the  dying  hours  of 
his  mother — scarcely  saved  from  the  crime  of  a  thief,  flying  from 
a  friendly  pursuit  with  a  notorious  reprobate ;  afterwards  impli- 
cated in  some  discreditable  transaction  about  a  horse,  rejecting 
all — every  hand  that  could  save  him,  clinging  by  choice  to  the 
lowest  companions  and  the  meanest  habits,  disappearing  from  the 
country,  and  last  seen,  ten  years  ago — the  beard  not  yet  on  his 
chin — with  that  same  reprobate  of  whom  I  have  spoken,  in  Paris ; 
a  day  or  so  only  before  his  companion,  a  coiner — a  murderer — 
fell  by  the  hands  of  the  police !  Ycu  remember  that  when,  in 
your  seventeenth  year,  you  evinced  some  desire  to  retake  your 
name — nay,  even  to  refind  that  guilty  brother — I  placed  before 
you,  as  a  sad  and  terrible  duty,  the  newspaper  that  contained  the 
particulars  of  the  death  and  the  former  adventures  of  that  wretched 
accomplice,  the  notorious  Gawtrey.  And,  telling  you  that  Mr. 
Beaufort  had  long  since  written  to  inform  me  that  his  own  son 
and  Lord  Lilburne  had  seen  your  brother  in  company  with  the 
miscreant  just  before  his  fate — nay,  was,  in  all  probability,  the 
very  youth  described  in  the  account  as  found  in  his  chamber  and 
escaping  the  pursuit — I  asked  you  if  you  would  now  venture  to 
leave  that  disguise — that  shelter  under  which  you  would  forever 
be  safe  from  the  opprobrium  of  the  world — from  the  shame  that, 
sooner  or  later,  your  brother  must  bring  upon  your  name  !  " 

"  It  is  true ;  it  is  true  !  "  said  the  pretended  nephew,  in  a  tone 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  27! 

of  great  anguish,  and  with  trembling  lips  which  the  blood  had 
forsaken.  "Horrible  to  look  either  to  his  past  or  his  future! 
But — but — we  have  heard  of  him  no  more;  no  one  ever  has 
learned  his  fate.  Perhaps — perhaps"  (and  he  seemed  to  breathe 
:nore  freely) — "  my  brother  is  no  more  /" 

And  poor  Catherine — and  poor  Philip — had  it  come  to  this? 
Did  the  one  brother  feel  a  sentiment  of  release,  of  joy,  in  con- 
jecturing the  death — perhaps  the  death  of  violence  and  shame — 
of  his  fellow-orphan  ?  Mr.  Spencer  shook  his  head  doubtingly, 
but  made  no  reply.  The  young  man  sighed  heavily  and  strode 
on  for  several  paces  in  advance  of  his  protector,  then,  turning 
back,  he  laid  his  hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"  Sir,"  he  said  in  a  low  voice  and  with  downcast  eyes,  "  you 
are  right :  this  disguise — this  false  name — must  be  forever  borne  ! 
Why  need  the  Beauforts,  then,  ever  know  who  and  what  I  am  ? 
Why  not  as  your  nephew — nephew  to  one  so  respected  and  exemp- 
lary— proffer  my  claims  and  plead  my  cause." 

"They  are  proud — so  it  is  said — and  worldly  ;  you  know  my 
family  was  in  trade — still — but — "  and  here  Mr.  Spencer  broke 
off  from  a  tone  of  doubt  into  that  of  despondency,  "but,  recol- 
lect, though  Mrs.  Beaufort  may  not  remember  the  circumstance, 
both  her  husband  and  her  son  have  seen  me — have  known  my 
name.  Will  they  not  suspect,  when  once  introduced  to  you,  the 
stratagem  that  has  been  adopted  ?  Nay,  has  it  not  been  from  that 
very  fear  that  you  have  wished  me  to  shun  the  acquaintance  of 
the  family  ?  Both  Mr.  Beaufort  and  Arthur  saw  you  in  child- 
hood, and  their  suspicion  once  aroused,  they  may  recognize  you 
at  once ;  your  features  are  developed,  but  not  altogether  changed. 
Come,  come !  My  adopted,  my  dear  son,  shake  off  this  fantasy 
betimes  :  let  us  change  the  scene :  I  will  travel  with  you — read 
with  you — go  where — " 

"  Sir — sir  !  "  exclaimed  the  lover,  smiting  his  breast,  "  you  are 
ever  kind,  compassionate,  generous ;  but  do  not — do  not  rob  me 
of  hope.  I  have  never,  thanks  to  you,  felt,  save  in  a  momentary 
dejection,  the  curse  of  my  birth.  Now  how  heavily  it  falls  ! 
Where  shall  I  look  for  comfort?" 

As  he  spoke,  the  sound  of  a  bell  broke  over  the  translucent  air 
and  the  slumbering  lake  :  it  was  the  bell  that  every  eve  and  morn 
summoned  that  innocent  and  pious  family  to  prayer.  The  old 
man's  face  changed  as  he  heard  it ;  changed  from  its  customary 
indolent,  absent,  listless  aspect,  into  an  expression  of  dignity, 
even  of  animation. 

"  Hark !  "  he  said,  pointing  upwards ;  "  Hark !  it  chides  you. 


272  N'lGHT  AND   MORNING. 

Who  shall  say,  '  where  shall  I  look  for  comfort '  while  God  is  in 
the  Heavens?  " 

The  young  man,  habituated  to  the  faith  and  observance  of 
religion,  till  they  had  pervaded  his  whole  nature,  bowed  his  head 
in  rebuke ;  a  few  tears  stole  from  his  eyes. 

"  You  are  right,  father  "  he  said  tenderly,  giving  emphasis  to 
the  deserved  and  endearing  name.  "  I  am  comforted  already  !  " 

So,  side  by  side,  silently  and  noiselessly,  the  young  and  the 
old  man  glided  back  to  the  house.  When  they  gained  the  quiet 
room  in  which  the  family  usually  assembled,  the  sisters  and  serv- 
ants were  already  gathered  round  the  table.  They  knelt  as  the 
loiterers  entered.  It  was  the  wonted  duty  of  the  younger  Spencer 
to  read  the  prayers  ;  and,  as  he  now  did  so,  his  graceful  counte- 
nance more  hushed,  his  sweet  voice  more  earnest  than  usual,  in 
its  accents  :  who  that  heard  could  have  deemed  the  heart  within 
convulsed  by  such  stormy  passions?  Or  was  it  not  in  that  hour 
— that  solemn  commune — soothed  from  its  woe  ?  O,  beneficent 
Creator  !  thou  who  inspirest  all  the  tribes  of  earth  with  the  desire 
to  pray,  hast  thou  not,  in  that  divinest  instinct,  bestowed  on  us 
the  happiest  of  thy  gifts? 

CHAPTER  III. 

"  Bertram.     I  mean  the  business  is  not  ended,  as  fearing  to  hear  of  it  hereafter. 

******** 
"  ist  Soldier.     Do  you  know  this  Captain  Dumain  ?  " 

All's  Well  that  Ends  Well. 

ONE  evening,  some  weeks  after  the  date  of  the  last  chapter, 
Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  sat  alone  in  his  house  in  Berkeley  Square. 
He  had  arrived  that  morning  from  Beaufort  Court,  on  his  way  to 
Winandermere,  to  which  he  was  summoned  by  a  letter  from  his 
wife. 

That  year  was  an  agitated  and  eventful  epoch  in  England ;  and 
Mr.  Beaufort  had  recently  gone  through  the  bustle  of  an  election 
— not,  indeed,  contested ;  for  his  popularity  and  his  property 
defied  all  rivalry  in  his  own  county. 

The  rich  man  had  just  dined,  and  was  seated  in  lazy  enjoy- 
ment by  the  side  of  the  fire,  which  he  had  had  lighted,  less  for 
the  warmth — though  it  was  then  September — than  for  the  com- 
panionship ;  engaged  in  finishing  his  madeira,  and,  with  half- 
closed  eyes,  munching  his  devilled  biscuits. 

"I  am  sure,"  he  soliloquized  while  thus  employed,  "  I  don't 
know  exactly  what  to  do, — my  wife  ought  to  decide  matters 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  273 

where  the  girl  is  concerned  ;  a  son  is  another  affair — that's  the 
use  of  a  wife.  Humph  !  " 

"  Sir,"  said  a  fat  servant,  opening  the  door,  "  a  gentleman 
wishes  to  see  you  upon  very  particular  business." 

"Business  at  this  hour  !     Tell  him  to  go  to  Mr.  Blackwell." 

"Yes,  sir." 

"  Stay  !  perhaps  he  is  a  constituent,  Simmons.  Ask  him  if  he 
belongs  to  the  county." 

"Yes,  sir." 

"A  great  estate  is  a  great  plague,"  muttered  Mr.  Beaufort; 
"  so  is  a  great  constituency.  It  is  pleasanter,  after  all,  to  be  in 
the  House  of  Lords.  I  suppose  I  could  if  I  wished  ;  but  then 
one  must  rat — that's  a  bore.  I  will  consult  Lilburn*.  Humph  ! " 
The  servant  re-appeared. 

"  Sir,  he  says  he  does  belong  to  the  county." 

"  Show  him  in  !     What  sort  of  a  person?  " 

"A  sort  of  gentleman,  sir;  that  is,"  continued  the  butler, 
mindful  of  five  shillings  just  slipped  within  his  palm  by  the 
stranger,  "quite  the  gentleman." 

"More  wine,  then  ;    stir  up  the  fire." 

In  a  few  moments  the  visitor  was  ushered  into  the  apartment. 
He  was  a  man  between  fifty  and  sixty,  but  still  aiming  at  the 
appearance  of  youth.  His  dress  evinced  military  pretensions; 
consisting  of  a  blue  coat,  buttoned  up  to  the  chin,  a  black  stock, 
loose  trousers  of  the  fashion  called  cossacks,  and  brass  spurs. 
He  wore  a  wig,  of  great  luxuriance  in  curl  and  rich  auburn  in 
hue  ;  with  large  whiskers  of  the  same  color,  slightly  tinged  with 
gray  at  the  roots.  By  the  imperfect  light  of  the  room  it  was  not 
perceptible  that  the  clothes  were  somewhat  threadbare,  and  that 
the  boots,  cracked  at  the  side,  admitted  glimpses  of  no  very  white 
hosiery  within.  Mr.  Beaufort,  reluctantly  rising  from  his  repose 
and  gladly  sinking  back  to  it,  motioned  to  a  chair,  and  put  on  a 
doleful  and  doubtful  semi-smile  of  welcome.  The  servant  placed 
the  wine  and  glasses  before  the  stranger ;  the  host  and  visitor 
were  alone. 

"So,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  languidly,  "you  are  from 

shire ;  I  suppose  about  the  canal, — may  I  offer  you  a  glass  of 

wine?" 

"  Most  happy,  sir — your  health  !  "  and  the  stranger,  with  evi- 
dent satisfaction,  tossed  off  a  bumper  to  so  complimentary  a  toast. 

"About  the  canal  ?  "  repeated  Mr.  Beaufort. 

"No,  sir,  no!  You  parliament  gentlemen  must  hauve  a  vaust 
deal  of  trouble  on  your  haunds — very  foine  property  I  understaund 
18 


274  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

yours  is,  sir.  Sir,  allow  me  to  drink  the  health  of  your  good 
lady!"- 

"I  thank  you,  Mr.  — ,  Mr.  — ,  what  did  you  say  your  name 
was?  I  beg  you  a  thousand  pardons." 

"  No  offaunce  in  the  least,  sir  ;  no  ceremony  with  me — this  is 
perticler  good  madeira  !  " 

"  May  I  ask  how  I  can  serve  you?  "  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  strug- 
gling between  the  sense  of  annoyance  and  the  fear  to  be  uncivil. 
'•'  And  pray,  had  I  the  honor  of  your  vote  in  the  last  election  ?  " 

"  No,  sir,  no !  It's  mauny  years  since  I  have  been  in  your  part 
of  the  world,  though  I  was  born  there." 

"Then  I  don't  exactly  see —  '  began  Mr.  Beaufort,  and 
stopped  with  dignity. 

"Why  I  call  on  you,"  put  in  the  stranger,  tapping  his  boots 
with  his  cane ;  and  then  recognizing  the  rents,  he  thrust  both  feet 
under  the  table. 

"  I  don't  say  that;  but  at  this  hour  I  am  seldom  at  leisure — not 
but  what  I  am  always  at  the  service  of  a  constituent,  that  is,  a 

voter !  Mr.  . ,  I  beg  your  pardon,  I  did  not  catch  your 

name." 

"  Sir,"  said  the  stranger,  helping  himself  to  a  third  glass  of 
wine;  "here's  a  health  to  your  young  folk  !  And  now  to  busi- 
ness." Here  the  visitor,  drawing  his  chair  nearer  to  his  host, 
assuming  a  more  grave  aspect,  and  dropping  something  of  his 
stilted  pronunciation,  continued  :  "  You  had  a  brother?" 

"  Well,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  with  a  very  changed  counte- 
nance. 

' '  And  that  brother  had  a  wife !  " 

Had  a  cannon  gone  off  in  the  ear  of  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort,  it 
could  not  have  shocked  or  stunned  him  more  than  that  simple 
word  with  which  his  companion  closed  his  sentence.  He  fell 
back  in  his  chair,  his  lips  apart,  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  stranger. 
He  sought  to  speak,  but  his  tongue  clove  to  his  mouth. 

"That  wife  had  two  sons,  born  in  wedlock  !  " 

"It  is  false  !  "  cried  Mr.  Beaufort,  finding  a  voice  at  length, 
and  springing  to  his  feet.  "  And  who  are  you,  sir?  and  what  do 
you  mean  by — " 

"Hush!"  said  the  stranger,  perfectly  unconcerned,  and 
regaining  the  dignity  of  his  haw-haw  enunciation :  "better  not 
let  the  servants  hear  aunything.  For  my  pawt,  I  think  servants 
hauve  the  longest  pair  of  ears  of  auny  persons,  not  excepting 
jauckasses ;  their  ears  stretch  from  the  pauntry  to  the  parlor.  Hush, 
sir  ! — perticler  good  madeira,  this  !  " 

'•Sir!"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  struggling  to  preserve,  or  rather 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  2  7 5 

recover,  his  temper,  "  your  conduct  is  exceedingly  strange  :  but 
allow  me  to  say,  that  you  are  wholly  misinformed.  My  brother 
never  did  marry ;  and  if  you  have  anything  to  say  on  behalf  of 
those  young  men — his  natural  sons — I  refer  you  to  my  solicitor, 
Mr.  Blackwell,  of  Lincoln's  Inn.  I  wish  you  a  good -evening." 

"Sir!  the  same  to  you — I  won't  trouble  you  auny  farther;  it 
was  only  out  of  koindness  I  called.  I  am  not  used  to  be  treated 
so — sir,  I  am  in  His  Maujesty's  service — sir,  you  will  foind  that 
the  witness  of  the  marriage  is  forthcoming;  you  will  think  of  me 
then,  and,  perhaps,  be  sorry.  But  I've  done, — 'Your  most  obedi- 
ent humble,  sir  !  "  And  the  stranger,  with  a  flourish  of  his  hand, 
turned  to  the  door. 

At  the  sight  of  this  determination  on  the  part  of  his  strange 
guest,  a  cold,  uneasy,  vague  presentiment  seized  Mr.  Beaufort. 
There,  not  flashed,  but  rather  froze,  across  him  the  recollection 
of  his  brother's  emphatic  but  disbelieved  assurances ;  of  Cathe- 
rine's obstinate  assertion  of  her  sons'  alleged  rights — rights  which 
her  lawsuit,  undertaken  on  her  own  behalf,  had  not  compromised ; 
a  fresh  lawsuit  might  be  instituted  by  the  son,  and  the  evidence 
which  had  been  wanting  in  the  former  suit  might  be  found  at  last. 
With  this  remembrance  and  these  reflections  came  a  horrible  train 
of  shadowy  fears, — witnesses,  verdict,  surrender,  spoliation — 
arrears — ruin  ! 

The -man,  who  had  gained  the  door,  turned  back  and  looked  at 
him  with  a  complacent,  half-triumphant  leer  upon  his  impudent, 
reckless  face. 

"Sir,"  then  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  mildly,  "I  repeat  that  you  had 
better  see  Mr.  Blackwell." 

The  tempter  saw  his  triumph.  "  I  have  a  secret  to  communi- 
cate, which  it  is  best  for  you  to  keep  snug.  How  mauny  people 
do  you  wish  me  to  see  about  it  ?  Come,  sir,  there  is  no  need  of  s 
lawyer;  or,  if  you  think  so,  tell  him  yourself.  Now  or  never,  Mr 
Beaufort." 

"  I  can  have  no  objection  to  hear  anything  you  have  to  say, 
sir,"  said  the  rich  man,  yet  more  mildly  than  before;  and  then 
added,  with  a  forced  smile,  "  though  my  rights  are  already  too 
confirmed  to  admit  of  a  doubt." 

Without  heeding  the  last  assertion,  the  stranger  coolly  walked 
back,  resumed  his  seat,  and,  placing  both  arms  on  the  table  and 
looking  Mr.  Beaufort  full  in  the  face,  thus  proceeded  : 

"Sir,  of  the  marriage  between  Philip  Beaufort  and  Catherine 
Morton  there  were  two  witnesses  :  the  one  is  dead,  the  other  went 
abroad — the  last  is  alive  still !  " 

"If  so,"  said  Mr.   Beaufort,  who,  not  naturally  deficient  in 


276  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

cunning  and  sense,  felt  every  faculty  now  prodigiously  sharpened, 
and  was  resolved  to  know  the  precise  grounds  for  alarm, — "  if  so, 
why  did  not  the  man — it  was  a  servant,  sir,  a  man-servant,  whom 
Mrs.  Morton  pretended  to  rely  on — appear  on  the  trial  ?  " 

"Because,  I  say,  he  was  abroad  and  could  not  be  found;  or 
the  search  after  him  miscaurried,  from  clumsy  management  and  a 
lack  of  the  rhino." 

"Hum!"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  "one  witness — one  witness — 
observe,  there  is  only  one ! — does  not  alarm  me  much.  It  is  not 
what  a  man  deposes,  it  is  what  a  jury  believe,  sir !  Moreover, 
what  has  become  of  the  young  men?  They  have  never  been 
heard  of  for  years.  They  are  probably  dead ;  if  so,  I  am  heir-at- 
law  !" 

"  I  know  where  one  of  them  is  to  be  found,  at  all  events." 

"The  elder?  Philip? "  -asked  Mr.  Beaufort,  anxiously,  and 
with  a  fearful  remembrance  of  the  energetic  and  vehement  char- 
acter prematurely  exhibited  by  his  nephew. 

"Pawdon  me!  I  need  not  aunswer  that  question." 

"Sir!  a  lawsuit  of  this  nature,  against  one  in  possession,  is 
very  doubtful,  and,"  added  the  rich  man  drawing  himself  up, 
"  and,  perhaps,  very  expensive  !  " 

"The  young  man  I  speak  of  does  not  want  friends,  who  will 
not  grudge  the  money." 

"Sir!  "  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  rising  and  placing  his  back  to  the 
fire — "  sir !  what  is  your  object  in  this  communication  ?  Do  you 
come,  on  the  part  of  the  young  man,  to  propose  a  compromise  ? 
If  so,  be  plain  !  " 

' '  I  come  on  my  own  pawt.  It  rests  with  you  to  say  if  the  young 
men  shall  never  know  it !  " 

"  And  what  do  you  want  ?  " 

"  Five  hundred  a-year  as  long  as  the  secret  is  kept." 

"  And  how  can  you  prove  that  there  is  a  secret,  after  all?  " 

"  By  producing  the  witness,  if  you  wish." 

"Will  he  go  halves  in  the  ^500  a  year?"  asked  Mr.  Beau- 
fort, artfully. 

"  That  is  moy  affair,  sir,"  replied  the  stranger. 

"  What  you  say,"  resumed  Mr.  Beaufort,  "  is  so  extraordinary 
— so  unexpected,  and  still,  to  me,  seems  so  improbable,  that  I 
must  have  time  to  consider.  If  you  will  call  on  me  in  a  week, 
and  produce  your  facts,  I  will  give  you  my  answer.  I  am  not  the 
man,  sir,  to  wish  to  keep  any  one  out  of  his  true  rights,  but  I 
will  not  yield,  on  the  other  hand,  to  imposture." 

"  If  you  don't  want  to  keep  them  out  of  their  rights,  I'd  best 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  2)7 

go  and  tell  my  young  gentlemen,"  said  the  stranger,  with  cool 
impudence. 

"I  tell  you  I  must  have  time,"  repeated  Beaufort,  disconcerted. 
"Besides,  I  have  not  myself  alone  to  look  to,  sir,"  he  added, 
with  dignified  emphasis  ;  "  I  am  a  father  !  " 

"  This  day  week  I  will  call  on  you  again.  Good-evening,  Mr. 
Beaufort !  "  And  the  man  stretched  out  his  hand  with  an  air  of 
amicable  condescension. 

The  respectable  Mr.  Beaufort  changed  color,  hesitated,  and 
finally  suffered  two  fingers  to  be  enticed  into  the  grasp  of  the  vis- 
itor, whom  he  ardently  wished  at  that  bourne  whence  no  visitor 
returns. 

The  stranger  smiled,  stalked  to  the  door,  laid  his  finger  on  his 
lip,  winked  knowingly,  and  vanished,  leaving  Mr.  Beaufort  a  prey 
to  such  feelings  of  uneasiness,  dread,  and  terror,  as  may  be  exper- 
ienced by  a  man  whom,  on  some  inch  or  two  of  slippery  rock,  the 
tides  have  suddenly  surrounded. 

He  remained  perfectly  still  for  some  moments,  and  then  glanc- 
ing round  the  dim  and  spacious  room,  his  eyes  took  in  all  the 
evidences  of  luxury  and  wealth  which  it  betrayed.  Above  the 
huge  sideboard,  that  on  festive  days  groaned  beneath  the  hoarded 
weight  of  the  silver  heirlooms  of  the  Beauforts,  hung,  in  its 
gilded  frame,  a  large  picture  of  the  family  seat,  with  the  stately 
porticoes,  the  noble  park,  the  groups  of  deer ;  and  around  the 
wall,  interspersed  here  and  there  with  ancestral  portraits  of  knight 
and  dame,  long  since  gathered  to  their  rest,  were  placed  master- 
pieces of  the  Italian  and  Flemish  art,  which  generation  after  gen- 
eration had  slowly  accumulated,  till  the  Beaufort  Collection  had 
become  the  theme  of  connoisseurs  and  the  study  of  young  genius. 

The  still  room,  the  dumb  pictures,  even  the  heavy  sideboard, 
seemed  to  gain  voice,  and  speak  to  him  audibly.  He  thrust  his 
hand  into  the  folds  of  his  waistcoat,  and  griped  his  own  flesh 
convulsively ;  then,  striding  to  and  fro  the  apartment,  he  endeav- 
ored to  re-collect  his  thoughts. 

"I  dare  not  consult  Mrs.  Beaufort,"  he  muttered;  "no — no, — 
she  is  a  fool !  Besides,  she's  not  in  the  way.  No  time  to  lose — 
I  will  go  to  Lilburne." 

Scarce  had  that  thought  crossed  him  than  he  hastened  to  put  it 
into  execution.  He  rang  for  his  hat  and  gloves,  and  sallied  out 
on  foot  to  Lord  Lilburne's  house  in  Park  Lane ;  the  distance  was 
short,  and  impatience  has  long  strides. 

He  knew  Lord  Lilburne  was  in  town,  for  that  personage  loved 
London  for  its  own  sake ;  and  even  in  September  he  would  have 
said  with  the  old  Duke  of  Queensbury,  when  some  one  observed 


278  folGHT   AND   MORNINC. 

that  London  was  very  empty;    "Yes;   but  it  is  fuller  than  the 
country." 

Mr.  Beaufort  found  Lord  Lilburne  reclined  on  a  sofa,  by  the 
open  window  of  his  drawing-room,  beyond  which  the  early  stars 
shone  upon  the  glimmering  trees  and  silver  turf  of  the  deserted 
park.  Unlike  the  simple  dessert  of  his  respectable  brother-in-law, 
the  costliest  fruits,  the  richest  wines  of  France,  graced  the  small 
table  placed  beside  his  sofa ;  and  as  the  starch  man  of  forms  and 
method  entered  the  room  at  one  door,  a  rustling  silk,  that  van- 
ished through  the  aperture  of  another,  seemed  to  betray  tokens  of 
a  tete-a-tete,  probably  more  agreeable  to  Lilburne  than  the  one 
with  which  only  our  narrative  is  concerned. 

It  would  have  been  a  curious  study  for  such  men  as  love  to  gaze 
upon  the  dark  and  wily  features  of  human  character,  to  have 
watched  the  contrast  between  the  reciter  and  the  listener,  as 
Beaufort,  with  much  circumlocution,  much  affected  disdain,  and 
real  anxiety,  narrated  the  singular  and  ominous  conversation 
between  himself  and  his  visitor. 

The  servant,  in  introducing  Mr.  Beaufort,  had  added  to  the 
light  of  the  room ;  and  the  candles  shone  full  on  the  face  and 
form  of  Mr.  Beaufort.  All  about  that  gentleman  was  so  com- 
pletely in  unison  with  the  world's  forms  and  seemings,  that  there 
was  something  moral  in  the  very  sight  of  him !  Since  his  acces- 
sion of  fortune,  he  had  grown  less  pale  and  less  thin ;  the  angles 
in  his  figure  were  filled  up.  On  his  brow  there  was  no  trace  of 
younger  passion.  No  able  vice  had  ever  sharpened  the  expres- 
sion ;  no  exhausting  vice  ever  deepened  the  lines.  He  was  the 
beau  ideal  Q{  a  county  member, — so  sleek,  so  staid,  so  business- 
like; yes,  so  clean,  so  neat,  so  much  the  gentleman.  And  now 
there  was  a  kind  of  pathos  in  his  gray  hairs,  his  nervous  smile, 
his  agitated  hands,  his  quick  and  uneasy  transition  of  posture, 
the  tremble  of  his  voice.  He  would  have  appeared  to  those  who 
saw,  but  heard  not,  The  Good  Man  in  trouble.  Cold,  motionless, 
speechless,  seemingly  apathetic,  but  in  truth  observant,  still 
reclined  on  the  sofa,  his  head  thrown  back,  but  one  eye  fixed  on 
his  companion,  his  hands  clasped  before  him,  Lord  Lilburne  lis- 
tened ;  and  in  that  repose,  about  his  face,  even  about  his  person, 
might  be  read  the  history  of  how  different  a  life  and  character  ! 
What  native  acuteness  in  the  stealthy  eye  !  What  hardened 
resolve  in  the  full  nostril  and  firm  lips  !  What  sardonic  contempt 
for  all  things  in  the  intricate  lines  about  the  mouth  !  What  ani- 
mal enjoyment  of  all  things  so  despised  in  that  delicate  nervous 
system,  which,  combined  with  original  vigor  of  constitution,  yet 
betrayed  itself  in  the  veins  on  the  hands  and  temples,  the  occa* 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  279 

sional  quiver  of  the  upper  lip  !  His  was  the  frame  above  all  oth- 
ers the  most  alive  to  pleasure — deep- chested,  compact,  sinewy, 
but  thin  to  leanness — delicate  in  its  texture  and  extremities, 
almost  to  effeminacy.  The  indifference  of  the  posture,  the  very 
habit  of  the  dress — not  slovenly,  indeed,  but  easy,  loose,  care- 
less— seemed  to  speak  of  the  man's  manner  of  thought  and 
life — his  profound  disdain  of  externals. 

Not  till  Beaufort  had  concluded  did  Lord  Lilburne  change  his 
position  or  open  his  lips ;  and  then,  turning  to  his  brother-in-law 
his  calm  face,  he  said  drily  : 

' '  I  always  thought  your  brother  had  married  that  woman  ;  he 
was  the  sort  of  man  to  do  it.  Besides,  why  should  she  have  gone 
to  law  without  a  vestige  of  proof,  unless  she  was  convinced  of 
her  rights?  Imposture  never  proceeds  without  some  evidence. 
Innocence,  like  a  fool,  as  it  is,  fancies  it  has  only  to  speak  to  be 
believed.  But  there  is  no  cause  for  alarm." 

"  No  cause  !     And  yet  you  think  there  was  a  marriage." 

"It  is  quite  clear,"  continued  Lilburne,  without  heeding  this 
interruption,  "  that  the  man,  whatever  his  evidence,  has  not  got 
sufficient  proofs.  If  he  had,  he  would  go  to  the  young  men  rather 
than  you  :  it  is  evident  that  they  would  promise  infinitely  larger 
rewards  than  he  could  expect  from  yourself.  Men  are  always 
more  generous  with  what  they  expect  than  with  what  they  have. 
All  rogues  know  this.  'Tis  the  way  Jews  and  usurers  thrive  upon 
heirs  rather  than  possessors;  'tis  the  philosophy  of  post-obits.  I  dare 
say  the  man  has  found  out  the  real  witness  of  the  marriage,  but 
ascertained  also,  that  the  testimony  of  that  witness  would  not  suf- 
fice to  dispossess  you.  He  might  be  discredited — rich  men  have 
a  way  sometimes  of  discrediting  poor  witnesses.  Mind,  he  says 
nothing  of  the  lost  copy  of  the  register,  whatever  may  be  the 
value  of  that  document,  which  I  am  not  lawyer  enough  to  say ;  of 
any  letters  of  your  brother  avowing  the  marriage.  Consider,  the 
register  itself  is  destroyed,  the  clergyman  dead.  Pooh !  make 
yourself  easy." 

"True,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  much  comforted;  "what  a  mem- 
ory you  have  !  ' ' 

"Naturally.  Your  wife  is  my  sister — I  hate  poor  relations — 
and  I  was  therefore  much  interested  in  your  accession  and  your 
lawsuit.  No;  you  may  feel  at  rest  on  this  matter,  so  far  as  a  suc- 
cessful lawsuit  is  concerned.  The  next  question  is,  Will  you 
have  a  lawsuit  at  all?  And  is  it  worth  while  buying  this  fellow? 
That  I  can't  say,  unless  I  see  him  myself." 

"  I  wish  to  Heaven  you  would  !  " 

"Very  willingly :  'tis  a  sort  of  thing  I  like,  I'm  fond  of  deal- 


280  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

ing  with  rogues,  it  amuses  me.  This  day  week?  I'll  be  at  your 
house — your  proxy  ;  I  shall  do  better  than  Blackwell.  And  since 
you  say  you  are  wanted  at  the  Lakes,  go  down,  and  leave  all  to 
me." 

"A  thousand  thanks.  I  can't  say  how  grateful  I  am.  You 
certainly  are  the  kindest  and  cleverest  person  in  the  world." 

"  You  can't  think  worse  of  the  world's  cleverness  and  kindness 
than  I  do,"  was  Lilburne's  rather  ambiguous  answer  to  the  com- 
pliment. "  But  why  does  my  sister  want  to  see  you?  " 

"Oh,  I  forgot!  Here  is  her  letter.  I  was  going  to  ask  your 
advice  in  this  too." 

Lord  Lilburne  took  the  letter,  and  glanced  over  it  with  the 
rapid  eye  of  a  man  accustomed  to  seize  in  everything  the  main 
gist  and  pith. 

"  An  offer  to  my  pretty  niece — Mr.  Spencer — requires  no  for- 
tune— his  uncle  will  settle  all  his  own — (poor  silly  old  man  !) 
All !  Why  that's  only  ^1000  a-year.  You  don't  think  much  of 
this,  eh  !  How  my  sister  can  even  ask  you  about  it  puzzles  me." 

"  Why  you  see,  Lilburne,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  rather  embar- 
rassed, "  there  is  no  question  of  fortune — nothing  to  go  out  of  the 
family ;  and,  really,  Arthur  is  so  expensive ;  and,  if  she  were  to 
marry  well,  I  could  not  give  her  less  than  fifteen  or  twenty  thou- 
sand pounds." 

"Aha!  I  see.  Every  man  to  his  taste:  here  a  daughter, 
there  a  dowry.  You  are  devilish  fond  of  money,  Beaufort.  Any 
pleasure  in  avarice, — eh?" 

Mr.  Beaufort  colored  very  much  at  the  remark  and  the  ques- 
tion, and,  forcing  a  smile,  said  : 

"  You  are  severe.  But  you  don't  know  what  it  is  to  be  father 
to  a  young  man." 

"  Then  a  great  many  young  women  have  told  me  sad  fibs  !  But 
you  are  right  in  your  sense  of  the  phrase.  No,  I  never  had  an 
heir  apparent,  thank  Heaven  !  No  children  imposed  upon  me 
by  law — natural  enemies,  to  count  the  years  between  the  bells 
that  ring  for  their  majority,  and  those  that  will  toll  for  my  decease. 
It  is  enough  for  me  that  I  have  a  brother  and  a  sister;  that 
my  brother's  son  will  inherit  my  estates ;  and  that,  in  the  mean- 
time, he  grudges  me  every  tick  in  that  clock.  What  then  ?  If  he 
had  been  my  uncle,  I  had  done  the  same.  Meanwhile,  I  see  as 
little  of  him  as  good-breeding  will  permit.  On  the  face  of  a  rich 
man's  heir  is  written  the  rich  man's  memento  mori  !  But  revenons 
a  nos  moutons.  Yes,  if  you  give  your  daughter  no  fortune,  your 
death  will  be  so  much  the  more  piofitable  to  Arthur  !  " 

"  Really,  you  take  such  a  very  odd  view  of  the  matter,"  said 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  281 

Mr.  Beaufort,  exceedingly  shocked.     "  But  I  see  you  don't  like 
the  marriage ;  perhaps  you  are  right. ' ' 

"Indeed,  I  have  no  choice  in  the  matter;  I  never  interfere 
between  father  and  children.  If  I  had  children  myself,  I  will, 
however,  tell  you,  for  your  .comfort,  that  they  might  marry 
exactly  as  they  pleased — I  would  never  thwart  them.  I  should 
be  too  happy  to  get  them  out  of  my  way.  If  they  married  well, 
one  would  have  all  the  credit;  if  ill,  one  would  have  an  excuse  to 
disown  them.  As  I  said  before,  I  dislike  poor  relations.  Though 
if  Camilla  lives  at  the  Lakes  when  she  is  married,  it  is  but  a  let- 
ter now  and  then  ;  and  that's  your  wife's  trouble,  not  yours.  But, 
Spencer — what  Spencer  !  What  family  ?  Was  there  not  a  Mr. 
Spencer  who  lived  at  Winandermere — who — " 

"Who  went  with  us  in  search  of  these  boys,  to  be  sure.  Very 
likely  the  same — nay,  he  must  be  so.  I  thought  so  at  the  first." 

"  Go  down  to  the  Lakes  to-morrow.  You  may  hear  something 
about  your  nephews  ;  "  at  that  word  Mr.  Beaufort  winced.  "  'Tis 
well  to  be  forearmed." 

"  Many  thanks  for  all  your  counsel,"  said  Beaufort,  rising, 
and  glad  to  escape ;  for  though  both  he  and  his  wife  held  the 
advice  of  Lord  Lilburne  in  the  highest  reverence,  they  always 
smarted  beneath  the  quiet  and  careless  stings  which  accompanied 
the  honey.  Lord  Lilburne  was  singular  in  this, — he  would  give 
to  any  one  who  asked  it,  but  especially  a  relation,  the  best  advice 
in  his  power;  and  none  gave  better,  that  is,  more  worldly  advice. 
Thus,  without  the  least  benevolence,  he  was  often  of  the  greatest 
service ;  but  he  could  not  help  mixing  up  the  draught  with  as 
much  aloes  and  bitter-apple  as  possible.  His  intellect  delighted 
in  exhibiting  itself  even  gratuitously.  His  heart  equally  delighted 
in  that  only  cruelty  which  polished  life  leaves  to  its  tyrants  towards 
their  equals, — thrusting  pins  into  the  feelings,  and  breaking  self- 
love  upon  the  wheel.  But  just  as  Mr.  Beaufort  had  drawn  on  his 
gloves  and  gained  the  doorway,  a  thought  seemed  to  strike  Lord 
Lilburne  : 

"  By  the  by,"  he  said,  "  you  understand  that  when  I  promised 
I  would  try  and  settle  the  matter  for  you,  I  only  meant  that  I 
would  learn  the  exact  causes  you  have  for  alarm  on  the  one  hand, 
or  for  a  compromise  with  this  fellow  on  the  other.  If  the  last  be 
advisable,  you  are  aware  that  I  cannot  interfere.  I  might  get 
into  a  scrape  ;  and  Beaufort  Court  is  not  my  property." 

"  I  don't  quite  understand  you." 

"  I  am  plain  enough,  too.  If  there  is  money  to  be  given,  it  is 
given  in  order  to  defeat  what  is  called  justice ;  to  keep  these 
nephews  of  yours  out  of  their  inheritance.  Now,  should  this 


,782  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

ever  come  to  light,  it  would  have  an  ugly  appearance.  They  who 
risk  the  blame  must  be  the  persons  who  possess  the  estate." 

"  If  you  think  it  dishonorable  or  dishonest — "  said  Beaufort, 
irresolutely. 

"  I  !  I  never  can  advise  as  to  the  feelings ;  I  can  only  advise  as 
to  the  policy.  If  you  don't  think  there  ever  was  a  marriage,  it 
may,  still,  be  honest  in  you  to  prevent  the  bore  of  a  lawsuit." 

"  But  if  he  can  prove  to  me  that  they  were  married?  " 

' '  Pooh  ! ' '  said  Lilburne,  raising  his  eyebrows  with  a  slight 
expression  of  contemptuous  impatience;  "it  rests  on  yourself 
whether  or  not  he  prove  it  to  YOUR  satisfaction !  For  my 
part,  as  a  third  person,  I  am  persuaded  the  marriage  did  take 
place.  But  if  I  had  Beaufort  Court,  my  convictions  would  be  all 
the  other  way.  You  understand.  I  am  too  happy  to  serve  you. 
But  no  man  can  be  expected  to  jeopardize  his  character,  or  coquet 
with  the  law,  unless  it  be  for  his  own  individual  interest.  Then, 
of  course,  he  must  judge  for  himself.  Adieu  !  I  expect  some 
friends — foreigners — Carlists — to  whist.  You  won't  join  them  ?  " 

"  I  never  play,  you  know.  You  will  write  to  me  at  Winander- 
mere  :  and,  at  all  events,  you  will  keep  off  the  man  till  I  return  ?" 

"Certainly." 

Beaufort,  whom  the  latter  part  of  the  conversation  had  com- 
forted far  less  than  the  former,  hesitated,  and  turned  the  door' 
handle  three  or  four  times ;  but,  glancing  towards  his  brother-in- 
law,  he  saw  in  that  cold  face  so  little  sympathy  in  the  struggle 
between  interest  and  conscience,  that  he  judged  it  best  to  with- 
draw at  once. 

As  soon  as  he  was  gone,  Lilburne  summoned  his  valet,  who  had 
lived  with  him  many  years,  and  who  was  his  confidant  in  all  the 
adventurous  gallantries  with  which  he  still  enlivened  the  autumn 
of  his  life. 

"  Dykeman,"  said  he,  " you  have  let  out  that  lady?" 

"Yes,  my  lord." 

"  1  am  not  at  home  if  she  calls  again.  She  is  stupid  ;  she  can- 
not get  the  girl  to  come  to  her  again.  I  shall  trust  you  with  an 
adventure,  Dykeman — an  adventure  that  will  remind  you  of  our 
young  days,  man.  This  charming  creature — I  tell  you  she  is 
irresistible — her  very  oddities  bewitch  me.  You  must — well,  you 
look  uneasy.  What  would  you  say?  " 

"  My  lord,  I  have  found  out  more  about  her — and — and — " 

"  Well,  well." 

The  valet  drew  near  and  whispered  something  in  his  master's 
ear. 

"  They  are  idiots  who  say  it,  then,"  answered  Lilburne, 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  283 

"  And,"  faltered  the  man,  with  the  shame  of  humanity  on  his 
face,  "  she  is  not  worthy  your  lordship's  notice — a  poor — " 

"  Yes,  I  know  she  is  poor;  and,  for  that  reason,  there  can  be 
no  difficulty,  if  the  thing  is  properly  managed.  You  never,  per- 
haps, heard  of  a  certain  Philip,  King  of  Macedon  ;  but  I  will  tell 
you  what  he  once  said,  as  well  as  I  can  remember  it :  '  Load  an 
ass  with  a  pannier  of  gold  ;  send  the  ass  through  the  gates  of  a 
city,  and  all  the  sentinels  will  run  away.'  Poor!  Where  there 
is  love,  there  is  charity  also,  Dykeman.  Besides — 

Here  Lilburne's  countenance  assumed  a  sudden  aspect  of  dark 
and  angry  passion, — he  broke  off  abruptly,  rose,. and  paced  the 
room,  muttering  to  himself.  Suddenly  he  stopped,  and  put  his 
hand  to  his  hip,  as  an  expression  of  pain  again  altered  the  char- 
acter of  his  face. 

"  The  limb  pains  me  still !  Dykeman — I  was  scarce — twenty- 
one — when  I  became  a  cripple  for  life."  He  paused,  drew  a  long 
breath,  smiled,  rubbed  his  hands  gently,  and  added :  ''Never 
fear — you  shall  be  the  ass ;  and  thus  Philip  of  Macedon  begins  to 
fill  the  pannier."  And  he  tossed  his  purse  into  the  hands  of  the 
valet,  whose  face  seemed  to  lose  its  anxious  embarrassment  at  the 
touch  of  the  gold.  Lilburne  glanced  at  him  with  a  quiet  sneer  : 
"  Go  !  I  will  give  you  my  orders  when  I  undress." 

"Yes!"  he  repeated  to  himself,  "the  limb  pains  me  still. 
But  he  died  !  Shot  as  a  man  would  shoot  a  jay  or  a  polecat  !  I 
have  the  newspaper  still  in  that  drawer.  He  died  an  outcast — a 
felon — a  murderer  !  And  I  blasted  his  name  ;  and  I  seduced  his 
mistress ;  and  I — am  John  Lord  Lilburne  !  " 

About  ten  o'clock,  some  half-a-dozen  of  those  gay  lovers  of 
London,  who,  like  Lilburne,  remain  faithful  to  its  charms  when 
more  vulgar  worshippers  desert  its  sunburnt  streets — mostly  single 
men — mostly  men  of  middle  age — dropped  in.  And  soon  after 
came  three  or  four  high-born  foreigners,  who  had  followed  into  Eng- 
land the  exile  of  the  unfortunate  Charles  X.  Their  looks,  at  once 
proud  and  sad — their  moustaches  curled  downward — their  beards 
permitted  to  grow — made  at  first  a  strong  contrast  with  the  smooth 
gay  Englishmen.  But  Lilburne,  who  was  fond  of  French  society, 
and  who,  when  he  pleased,  could  be  courteous  and  agreeable, 
soon  placed  the  exiles  at  their  ease ;  and,  in  the  excitement  of 
high  play,  all  differences  of  mood  and  humor  speedily  vanished. 
Morning  was  in  the  skies  before  they  sat  down  to  supper. 

"  You  have  been  very  fortunate  to-night,  milord,"  said  one  of 
the  Frenchmen,  with  an  envious  tone  of  congratulation. 

"  But,    indeed,"   said  another,  who,  having  bee*,  ^veral  times 


284  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

his  host's  partner,  had  won  largely,  "  you  are  the  finest  player, 
milord,  I  ever  encountered." 

"  Always  excepting  Monsieur  Deschapelles  and ,"  replied 

Lilburne,  indifferently.  And,  turning  the  conversation,  he  asked 
one  of  the  guests  why  he  had  not  introduced  him  to  a  French  offi- 
cer of  merit  and  distinction  ;  "  With  whom,"  said  Lord  Lilburne, 
' '  I  understand  that  you  are  intimate,  and  of  whom  I  hear  your 
countrymen  very  often  speak." 

"You  mean  De  Vaudemont.  Poor  fellow!"  said  a  middle- 
aged  Frenchman,  of  a  graver  appearance  than  the  rest. 

"  But  why  <  poor  fellow,'  Monsieur  de  Liancourt  ?  " 

"  He  was  rising  so  high  before  the  revolution.  There  was  not 
a  braver  officer  in  the  army.  But  he  is  but  a  soldier  of  fortune, 
and  his  career  is  closed." 

"  Till  the  Bourbons  return,"  said  another  Carlist,  playing  with 
his  moustache. 

"  You  will  really  honor  me  much  by  introducing  me  to  him," 
said  Lord  Lilburne.  "  De  Vaudemont — it  is  a  good  name, — per- 
haps, too,  he  plays  at  whist." 

"  But,"  observed  one  of  the  Frenchmen,  "  I  am  by  no  means 
sure  that  he  has  the  best  right  in  the  world  to  the  name.  'Tis  a 
strange  story." 

"  May  I  hear  it?  "  asked  the  host. 

"  Certainly.  It  is  briefly  this  :  There  was  an  old  Vicomte  de 
Vaudemont  about  Paris;  of  good  birth,  but  extremely  poor — a 
mauvais  sujet.  He  had  already  had  two  wives,  and  run  through 
their  fortunes.  Being  old  and  ugly,  and  men  who  survive  two 
wives  having  a  bad  reputation  among  marriageable  ladies  at  Paris, 
he  found  it  difficult  to  get  a  third.  Despairing  of  the  noblesse, 
he  went  among  the  bourgeoisie  with  that  hope.  His  family  were 
kept  in  perpetual  fear  of  a  ridiculous  mesalliance.  Among  these 
relations  was  Madame  de  Merville,  whom  you  may  have  heard 
of." 

"  Madame  de  Merville  !    Ah,  yes  !    Handsome,  was  she  not?  " 

"It  is  true.  Madame  de  Merville,  whose  failing  was  pride, 
was  known  more  than  once  to  have  bought  off  the  matrimonial 
inclinations  of  the  amorous  vicomte.  Suddenly  there  appeared 
in  her  circles  a  very  handsome  young  man.  He  was  presented 
formally  to  her  friends  as  the  son  of  the  Vicomte  de  Vaudemont 
by  his  second  marriage  with  an  English  lady,  brought  up  in  Eng- 
land, and  now  for  the  first  time  publicly  acknowledged.  Some 
scandal  was  circulated — " 

"  Sir,"  interrupted  Monsieur  de  Liancourt,  very  gravely,  "the 
scandal  was  such  as  all  honorable  men  must  stigmatize  and  des- 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  285 

pise — it  was  only  to  be  traced  to  some  lying  lackey — a  scandal 
that  the  young  man  was  already  the  lover  of  a  woman  of  stainless 
reputation  the  very  first  day  that  he  entered  Paris  !  I  answer 
for  the  falsity  of  that  report.  But  that  report  I  own  was  one  that 
decided  not  only  Madame  de  Merville,  who  was  a  sensitive — too 
sensitive — a  person,  but  my  friend  young  Vaudemont,  to  a  mar- 
riage, from  the  pecuniary  advantages  of  which  he  was  too  high- 
spirited  not  to  shrink." 

"  Well,"  said  Lord  Lilburne,  "  then  this  young  de  Vaudemont 
married  Madame  de  Merville  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Liancourt,  somewhat  sadly,  "  it  was  not  so  de- 
creed ;  for  Vaudemont,  with  a  feeling  which  belongs  to  a  gentle- 
man, and  which  I  honor,  while  deeply  and  gratefully  attached  to 
Madame  de  Merville,  desired  that  he  might  first  win  for  himself 
some  honorable  distinction  before  he  claimed  a  hand  to  which 
men  of  fortunes  so  much  higher  had  aspired  in  vain.  "  I  am  not 
ashamed,"  he  added,  after  a  slight  pause,  "  to  say  that  I  had  been 
one  of  the  rejected  suitors,  and  that  I  still  revere  the  memory  of 
Eugenie  de  Merville.  The  young  man,  therefore,  was  to  have 
entered  my  regiment.  Before,  however,  he  had  joined  it,  and 
while  yet  in  the  full  flush  of  a  young  man's  love  for  a  woman 
formed  to  excite  the  strongest  attachment,  she — she — "  The 
Frenchman's  voice  trembled,  and  he  resumed  with  affected  com- 
posure :  "Madame  de  Merville,  who  had  the  best  and  kindest 
heart  that  ever  beat  in  a  human  breast,  learned  one  day  that  there 
was  a  poor  widow  in  the  garret  of  the  hotel  she  inhabited  who 
was  dangerously  ill — without  medicine  and  without  food — having 
lost  her  only  friend  and  supporter  in  her  husband  some  time 
before.  In  the  impulse  of  the  moment,  Madame  de  Merville  her- 
self attended  this  widow — caught  the  fever  that  preyed  upon  her 
— was  confined  to  her  bed  ten  days — and  died,  as  she  had  lived, 
in  serving  others  and  forgetting  self.  And  so  much,  sir,  for  the 
scandal  you  spoke  of !  " 

"A  warning,"  observed  Lord  Lilburne,  "against  trifling  with 
one's  health  by  that  vanity  of  parading  a  kind  heart,  which  is 
called  charity.  If  charity,  mon  cher,  begins  at  home,  it  is  in  the 
drawing-room,  not  the  garret !  " 

The  Frenchman  looked  at  his  host  in  some  disdain,  bit  his  lip, 
and  was  silent. 

"But  still,"  resumed  Lord  Lilburne,  "still  it  is  so  probable 
that  your  old  vicomte  had  a  son  ;  and  I  can  so  perfectly  under- 
stand why  he  did  not  wish  to  be  embarrassed  with  him  as  long  as 
he  could  help  it,  that  I  do  not  understand  why  there  should  be 
any  doubt  of  the  younger  de  Vaudemont's  parentage." 


2 86  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

"  Because,"  said  the  Frenchman,  who  had  first  commenced  the 
narrative,  "  because  the  young  man  refused  to  take  the  legal  steps 
to  proclaim  his  birth  and  naturalize  himself  a  Frenchman ; 
because,  no  sooner  was  Madame  de  Merville  dead,  than  he  for- 
sook the  father  he  had  so  newly  discovered — forsook  France,  and 
entered  with  some  other  officers,  under  the  brave ,in  the  ser- 
vice of  one  of  the  native  princes  of  India." 

"But  perhaps  he  was  poor,"  observed  Lord  Lilburne.  "A 
father  is  a  very  good  thing,  and  a  country  is  a  very  good  thing, 
but  still  a  man  must  have  money ;  and  if  your  father  does  not  do 
much  for  you,  somehow  or  other  your  country  generally  follows 
his  example." 

"My  lord,"  said  Liancourt,  "my  friend  here  has  forgotten  to 
say  that  Madame  de  Merville  had  by  deed  of  gift  (though  un- 
known to  her  lover)  before  her  death,  made  over  to  young  Vaude- 
mont  the  bulk  of  her  fortune ;  and  that,  when  he  was  informed 
of  this  donation,  after  her  decease,  and  sufficiently  recovered 
from  the  stupor  of  his  grief,  he  summoned  her  relations  round 
him,  declared  that  her  memory  was  too  dear  to  him  for  wealth  to 
console  him  for  her  loss,  and  reserving  to  himself  but  a  modest 
and  bare  sufficiency  for  the  common  necessaries  of  a  gentleman, 
he  divided  the  rest  amongst  them,  and  repaired  to  the  East ;  not 
only  to  conquer  his  sorrow  by  the  novelty  and  stir  of  an  exciting 
life,  but  to  carve  out  with  his  own  hand  the  reputation  of  an  hon- 
orable and  brave  man.  My  friend  remembered  the  scandal  long 
buried,  he  forgot  the  generous  action." 

"  Your  friend,  you  see,  my  dear  Monsieur  de  Liancourt,"  re- 
marked Lilburne,  "  is  more  a  man  of  the  world  than  you  are  !  " 

"And  I  was  just  going  to  observe, "  said  the  friend  thus  re- 
ferred to,  "that  that  very  action  seemed  to  confirm  the  rumor 
that  there  had  been  some  little  manoeuvring  as  to  this  unexpected 
addition  to  the  name  of  de  Vaudemont;  for  if  himself  related  to 
Madame  de  Merville,  why  have  such  scruples  to  receive  her 
gift?" 

"A  very  shrewd  remark,"  said  Lord  Lilburne,  looking  with 
some  respect  at  the  speaker  ;  "  and  I  own  that  it  is  a  very  unac- 
countable proceeding,  and  one  of  which  I  don't  think  you  or  I 
would  ever  have  been  guilty.  Well,  and  the  old  vicomte?  " 

"  Did  not  live  long!  "  said  the  Frenchman,  evidently  gratified 
by  his  host's  compliment,  while  Liancourt  threw  himself  back  in 
his  chair  in  grave  displeasure.  "  The  young  man  remained  some 
years  in  India,  and  when  he  returned  to  Paris,  our  friend  here, 
Monsieur  de  Liancourt  (then  in  favor  with  Charles  X.)  and 
Madame  de  Merville's  relations  took  him  up.  He  had  already 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  287 

acquired  a  reputation  in  this  foreign  service,  and  he  obtained  a 
place  at  the  court,  and  a  commission  in  the  king's  guards.  I 
allow  that  he  would  certainly  have  made  a  career,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  Three  Days.  As  it  is,  you  see  him  in  London,  like  the 
rest  of  us,  an  exile  !  " 

"And  I  suppose,  without  a  sou.'1 

"  No,  I  believe  that  he  had  still  saved,  and  even  augmented  in 
India,  the  portion  he  allotted  to  himself  from  Madame  de 
Merville's  bequest." 

"And  if  he  don't  play  whist,  he  ought  to  play  it,"  said  Lil- 
burne.  ' '  You  have  roused  my  curiosity ;  I  hope  you  will  let  me 
make  his  acquaintance,  Monsieur  de  Liancourt.  I  am  no  politi- 
cian, but  allow  me  to  propose  this  toast :  '  Success  to  those  who 
have  the  wit  to  plan,  and  the  strength  to  execute.'  In  other 
words,  '  the  Right  Divine  ! '" 

Soon  afterwards  the  guests  retired. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

"  Jfos.  Happily,  he's  the  second  time  come  to  them." — Hamlet, 

IT  was  the  evening  after  that  in  which  the  conversations 
recorded  in  our  last  chapter,  were  held — evening  in  the  quiet 

suburb  of  H .     The  desertion  and  silence  of  the  metropolis 

in  September  had  extended  to  its  neighboring  hamlets;  a  village 
in  the  heart  of  the  country  could  scarcely  have  seemed  more 
still ;  the  lamps  were  lighted,  many  of  the  shops  already  closed, 
a  few  of  the  sober  couples  and  retired  spinsters  of  the  place  might, 
here  and  there,  be  seen  slowly  wandering  homeward  after  their 
evening  walk;  two  or  three  dogs,  in  spite  of  the  prohibitions  of 
the  magistrates  placarded  on  the  walls, — (manifestoes  which 
threatened  with  death  the  dogs,  and  predicted  more  than  ordi- 
nary madness  to  the  public,) — were  playing  in  the  main  road, 
disturbed  from  time  to  time  as  the  slow  coach,  plying  between 
the  city  and  the  suburb,  crawled  along  the  thoroughfare,  or  as 
the  brisk  mails  whirled  rapidly  by,  announced  by  the  cloudy  dust 
and  the  guard's  lively  horn.  Gradually  even  these  evidences  of 
life  ceased;  the  saunterers  disappeared,  the  mails  had  passed,  the 
dogs  gave  place  to  the  later  and  more  stealthy  perambulations  of 
their  feline  successors  "who  love  the  moon."  At  unfrequent 
intervals  the  more  important  shops — the  linen-drapers',  the  chem- 
ists', and  the  gin-palace — still  poured  out,  across  the  shadowy 
road,  their  streams  of  light,  from  windows  yet  unclosed:  but, 
with  these  exceptions,  the  business  of  the  place  §tppd  still. 


288  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

At  this  time  there  emerged  from  a  milliner's  house  (shop,  to 
outward  appearance,  it  was  not,  evincing  its  gentility  and  its 
degree  above  the  Capelocracy,  to  use  a  certain  classical  neolog- 
ism, by  a  brass  plate  on  an  oak  door,  whereon  was  graven, 
"  Miss  Semper,  Milliner  and  Dressmaker,  from  Madame  Devy  "), 
at  this  time,  I  say,  and  from  this  house,  there  emerged  the  light 
and  graceful  form  of  a  young  female.  She  held  in  her  left  hand 
a  little  basket,  of  the  contents  of  which  (for  it  was  empty)  she 
had  apparently  just  disposed  ;  and  as  she  stepped  across  the  road, 
the  lamp-light  fell  on  a  face  in  the  first  bloom  of  youth,  and 
characterized  by  an  expression  of  child-like  innocence  and 
candor.  It  was  a  face  regularly  and  exquisitely  lovely,  yet  some- 
thing there  was  in  the  aspect  that  saddened  you ;  you  knew  not 
why,  for  it  was  not  sad  itself;  on  the  contrary,  the  lips  smiled 
and  the  eyes  sparkled.  As  she  now  glided  along  the  shadowy 
street  with  a  light,  quick  step,  a  man,  who  had  hitherto  been  con- 
cealed by  the  portico  of  an  attorney's  house,  advanced  stealthily, 
and  followed  her  at  a  little  distance.  Unconscious  that  she  was 
dogged,  and  seemingly  fearless  of  all  danger,  the  girl  went  lightly 
on,  swinging  her  basket  playfully  to  and  fro,  and  chanting,  in  a 
low  but  musical  tone,  some  verses,  that  seemed  rather  to  belong 
to  the  nursery  than  to  that  age  which  the  fair  singer  had  attained. 

As  she  came  to  an  angle  which  the  main  street  formed  with  a 
lane,  narrow  and  partially  lighted,  a  policeman,  stationed  there, 
looked  hard  at  her,  and  then  touched  his  hat  with  an  air  of 
respect,  in  which  there  seemed  also  a  little  of  compassion. 

"  Good-night  to  you,"  said  the  girl,  passing  him,  and  with  a 
frank,  gay  tone. 

"  Shall  I  attend  you  home,  miss?  "  said  the  man. 

"What  for?  I  am  very  well!"  answered  the  young  woman, 
with  an  accent  and  look  of  innocent  surprise. 

Just  at  this  time  the  man,  who  had  hitherto  followed  her, 
gained  the  spot,  and  turned  down  the  lane. 

"Yes,"  replied  the  policeman;  "  but  it  is  getting  dark,  miss." 

"  So  it  is  every  night  when  I  walk  home,  unless  there's  a  moon. 
Good-by.  The  moon,"  she  repeated  to  herself,  as  she  walked  on 
— "  I  used  to  be  afraid  of  the  moon  when  I  was  a  little  child;  " 
and  then,  after  a  pause,  she  murmured,  in  a  low  chant : 

"  The   moon,  she   is  a  wandering  ghost, 

That  walks  in  penance  nightly. 
How  sad  she  is,  that  wandering  moon, 

For  all  she  shines  so  brightly  ! 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  289 

I  watched  her  eyes  when  I  was  young, 

Until  they  turned  my  brain, 
And  now  I  often  weep  to  think 

'Twill  ne'er  be  right  again." 

As  the  murmur  of  these  words  died  at  a  distance  down  the  lane 
in  which  the  girl  had  disappeared,  the  policeman,  who  had  paus- 
ed to  listen,  shook  his  head  mournfully,  and  said,  while  he  moved 
on  : 

"Poor  thing  !  they  should  not  let  her  always  go  about  by  her- 
self; and  yet,  who  would  harm  her?" 

Meanwhile  the  girl  proceeded  along  the  lane,  which  was  skirted 
by  small,  but  not  mean  houses,  till  it  terminated  in  a  cross-stile, 
that  admitted  into  a  churchyard.  Here  hung  the  last  lamp  in  the 
path,  and  a  few  dim  stars  broke  palely  over  the  long  grass  and 
scattered  grave-stones,  without  piercing  the  deep  shadow  which 
the  church  threw  over  a  large  portion  of  the  sacred  ground.  Just 
as  she  passed  the  stile,  the  man,  whom  we  have  before  noticed, 
and  who  had  been  leaning,  as  if  waiting  for  some  one,  against 
the  pales,  approached,  and  said  gently: 

"  Ah,  miss  !  it  is  a  lone  place  for  one  so  beautiful  as  you  are 
to  be  alone.  You  ought  never  to  be  on  foot." 

The  girl  stopped,  and  looked  full,  but  without  any  alarm  in  her 
eyes,  into  the  man's  face. 

"Go  away!"  she  said,  with  a  half-peevish,  half-kindly  tone 
of  command,  "  I  don't  know  you." 

' '  But  I  have  been  sent  to  speak  to  you  by  one  who  does  know 
you,  miss — one  who  loves  you  to  distraction — he  has  seen  you 
before  at  Mrs.  West's.  He  is  so  grieved  to  think  you  should 
walk — you,  who  ought,  he  says,  to  have  every  luxury — that  he  has 
sent  his  carriage  for  you.  It  is  on  the  other  side  of  the  yard.  Do 
come  now,  "  and  he  laid  his  hand,  though  very  lightly,  on  her 
arm. 

"  At  Mrs.  West's  !  "  she  said  ;  and,  for  the  first  time,  her  voice 
and  look  showed  fear.  "  Go  away  directly  !  How  dare  you  touch 
me!" 

"  But,  my  dear  miss,  you  have  no  idea  how  my  employer  loves 
you,  and  how  rich  he  is.  See,  he  has  sent  you  all  this  money  ;  it 
is  gold — real  gold.  You  may  have  what  you  like,  if  you  will  but 
come.  Now,  don't  be  silly,  miss." 

The  girl  made  no  answer,  but  with  a  sudden  spring  passed  the 
man,  and  ran  lightly  and  rapidly  along  the  path,  in  an  opposite 
direction  from  that  to  which  the  tempter  had  pointed,  when  invit- 
ing her  to  the  carriage.  The  man,  surprised,  but  not  baffled, 
reached  her  in  an  instant,  and  caught  hold  of  her  dress. 


290  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

"Stay  !  you  must  come — you  must!  "  he  said,  threateningly; 
and,  loosening  his  grasp  on  her  shawl,  he  threw  his  arm  round 
her  waisit. 

"  Doii'.  * "  cried  the  girl,  pleadingly,  and  apparently  subdued, 
turning  her  fair,  soft  face  upon  her  pursuer,  and  clasping  her 
hands.  ' '  Be  quiet !  Fanny  is  silly !  No  one  is  ever  rude  to  poor 
Fanny !  " 

"And  no  one  will  be  rude  to  you,  miss,"  said  the  man,  appar- 
ently touched  ;  "  but  I  dare  not  go  without  you.  You  don't 
know  what  you  refuse.  Come  ;  "  and  he  attempted  gently  to  draw 
her  back. 

"No,  no  !  "  said  the  girl,  changing  from  supplication  to  anger, 
and  raising  her  voice  into  a  shriek,  "  No  !  I  will — " 

"Nay,  then,"  interrupted  the  man,  looking  round  anxiously ; 
and,  with  a  quick  and  dexterous  movement,  he  threw  a  large  hand- 
kerchief over  her  face,  and,  as  he  held  it  fast  to  her  lips  with  one 
hand,  he  lifted  her  from  the  ground.  Still  violently  struggling, 
the  girl  contrived  to  remove  the  handkerchief,  and  once  more  her 
shriek  of  terror  rang  through  the  violated  sanctuary. 

At  that  instant  a  loud  deep  voice  was  heard,  "  Who  calls  ?" 
And  a  tall  figure  seemed  to  rise,  as  from  the  grave  itself,  and 
emerge  from  the  shadow  of  the  church.  A  moment  more,  and  a 
strong  gripe  was  laid  on  the  shoulder  of  the  ravisher.  "  What  is 
this?  On  God's  ground,  too  !  Release  her,  wretch  !  " 

The  man,  trembling,  half  with  superstitious,  half  with  bodily 
fear,  let  go  his  captive,  who  fell  at  once  at  the  knees  of  her 
deliverer. 

"Don't  you  hurt  me,  too,"  she  said,  as  the  tears  rolled  down 
her  eyes.  "  I  am  a  good  girl — and  my  grandfather's  blind." 

The  stranger  bent  down  and  raised  her ;  then  looking  round 
for  the  assailant  with  an  eye  whose  dark  fire  shone  through  the 
gloom,  he  perceived  the  coward  stealing  off.  He  disdained  to 
to  pursue. 

"My  poor  child,"  said  he,  with  that  voice  which  the  strong 
assume  to  the  weak — the  man  to  some  wounded  infant — the  voice 
of  tender  superiority  and  compassion,  "  there  is  no  cause  for  fear 
now.  Be  soothed.  Do  you  live  near?  Shall  I  see  you  home?  " 

"  Thank  you  !  That's  kind.  Pray  do  !  "  And,  with  an  infan- 
tine confidence  she  took  his  hand,  as  a  child  does  that  of  a  grown- 
up person ;  so  they  walked  on  together. 

"And,"  said  the  stranger,  "  do  you  know  that  man  ?  Has  he 
insulted  you  before?" 

"No — don't  talk  of  him:  ce  me  fait  mvl /"  And  she  put  her 
hand  to  her  forehead, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  291 

The  French  was  spoken  with  so  French  an  accent,  that,  in 
some  curiosity,  the  stranger  cast  his  eye  over  her  plain  dress. 

"  You  speak  French  well." 

"Do  I?  I  wish  I  knew  more  words — I  only  recollect  a  few. 
When  I  am  very  happy  or  very  sad  they  come  into  my  head.  But 
I  am  happy  now.  I  like  your  voice — I  like  you.  Oh !  I  have 
dropped  my  basket !  " 

"Shall  I  go  back  for  it,  or  shall  I  buy  you  another?  " 

"  Another!  Oh,  no  !  come  back  for  it.  How  kind  you  are  ! 
Ah  !  I  see  it!  "  and  she  broke  away  and  ran  forward  to  pick  it 
up. 

When  she  had  recovered  it,  she  laughed,  she  spoke  to  it,  she 
kissed  it. 

Her  companion  smiled  as  he  said : 

"Some  sweetheart  has  given  you  that  basket — it  seems  but  a 
common  basket,  too." 

"I  have  had  it — oh,  ever  since — since — I  don't  know  how 
long  !  It  came  with  me  from  France — it  was  full  of  little  toys. 
They  are  gone — I  am  so  sorry ! ' ' 

"  How  old  are  you  ?  " 

"I  don't  know." 

"  My  pretty  one,"  said  the  stranger,  with  deep  pity  in  his  rich 
voice,  "your  mother  should  not  let  you  go  out  alone  at  thig 
hour." 

'•'  Mother  !  mother  !  "  repeated  the  girl,  in  a  tone  of  surprise. 

"  Have  you  no  mother?  " 

"No!  I  had  a  father  once.  But  he  died,  they  say.  I  did 
not  see  him  die.  I  sometimes  cry  when  I  think  that  I  shall  never, 
never  see  him  again  !  But,"  she  said,  changing  her  accent  from 
melancholy  almost  to  joy,  "he  is  to  have  a  grave  here  like  the 
other  girls'  fathers — a  fine  stone  upon  it — and  all  to  be  done  with 
my  money  !  " 

"  Your  money,  my  child  ?  " 

"Yes;  the  money  I  make.  I  sell  my  work  and  take  the  money 
to  my  grandfather;  but  I  lay  by  a  little  every  week  for  a  grave- 
stone for  my  father." 

"  Will  the  grave-stone  be  placed  in  that  churchyard  ?  "  They 
were  now  in  another  lane;  and,  as  he  spoke,  the  stranger  checked 
her,  and  bending  down  to  look  into  her  face,  he  murmured  to 
himself:  "  Is  it  possible?  It  must  be — it  must !  " 

"Yes!  I  love  that  churchyard — my  brother  told  me  to  put 
flowers  there;  and  grandfather  and  I  sit  there  in  the  summer, 
without  speaking,  Jfot  I  don't  talk  much,  I  like  singing  better; 


/92  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

«« '  All  things  that  good  and  harmless  are, 

Are  taught,  they  say,  to  sing, — 
The  maiden  resting  at  her  work, 

The  bird  upon  the  wing ; 
The  little  ones  at  church,  in  prayer, 

The  angels  in  the  sky — 
The  angels  less  when  babes  are  born 

Than  when  the  aged  die." ' 

And  unconscious  of  the  latent  moral,  dark  or  cheering,  according 
as  we  estimate  the  value  of  this  life,  couched  in  the  concluding 
rhyme,  Fanny  turned  round  to  the  stranger,  and  said,  "Why 
should  the  angels  be  glad  when  the  aged  die?  " 

"  That  they  are  released  from  a  false,  unjust,  and  miserable 
world,  in  which  the  first  man  was  a  rebel,  and  the  second  a  mur- 
derer !"  muttered  the  stranger  between  his  teeth,  which  he 
gnashed  as  he  spoke. 

The  girl  did  not  understand  him ;  she  shook  her  head  gently, 
and  made  no  reply.  A  few  moments,  and  she  paused  before  a 
small  house. 

"This  is  my  home." 

"  It  is  so,"  said  her  companion,  examining  the  exterior  of  the 
house  with  an  earnest  gaze ;  "and  your  name  is  Fanny." 

"Yes:  every  one  knows  Fanny;  Come  in;  "  and  the  girl 
opened  the  door  with  a  latch-key. 

The  stranger  bowed  his  stately  height  as  he  crossed  the  low 
threshold  and  followed  his  guide  into  a  little  parlor. 

Before  a  table,  on  which  burned  dimly,  and  with  unheeded 
wick,  a  single  candle,  sat  a  man  of  advanced  age;  and  as  he 
turned  his  face  to  the  door,  the  stranger  saw  that  he  was  blind. 
The  girl  bounded  to  his  chair,  passed  her  arms  round  the  old 
man's  neck,  and  kissed  his  forehead  ;  then  nestling  herself  at  his 
feet,  and  leaning  her  clasped  hands  carelessly  on  his  knee,  she 
said  : 

"  Grandpapa,  I  have  brought  you  somebody  you  must  love. 
He  has  been  so  kind  to  Fanny." 

"And  neither  of  you  can  remember  me  !  "  said  the  guest. 

The  old  man,  whose  dull  face  seemed  to  indicate  dotage,  half 
raised  himself  at  the  sound  of  the  stranger's  voice. 

"  Who  is  that?"  said  he,  with  a  feeble  and  querulous  voice. 
"  Who  wants  me?" 

"  I  am  the  friend  of  your  lost  son.  I  am  he  who,  ten  years 
ago,  brought  Fanny  to  your  roof,  and  gave  her  to  your  care — your 
son's  last  charge.  And  you  blessed  your  son,  and  forgave  him, 
and  vowed  to  be  a  father  to  his  Fanny," 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  293 

The  old  man,  who  had  now  slowly  risen  to  his  feet,  trembled 
violently,  and  stretched  out  his  hands. 

' '  Come  near — near — let  me  put  my  hands  on  your  head.  I 
cannot  see  you  ;  but  Fanny  talks  of  you,  and  prays  for  you ;  and 
Fanny — she  has  been  an  angel  to  me !  " 

The  stranger  approached  and  half  knelt  as  the  old  man  spread 
his  hands  over  his  head,  muttering  inaudibly.  Meanwhile  Fanny, 
pale  as  death — her  lips  apart,  an  eager,  painful  expression  on  her 
face — looked  inquiringly  on  the  dark,  marked  countenance  of  the 
visitor,  and  creeping  towards  him  inch  by  inch,  fearfully  touched 
his  dress — his  arms — his  countenance. 

' '  Brother, ' '  she  said  at  last,  doubtingly  and  timidly ;  ' '  Brother, 
I  thought  I  could  never  forget  you  !  But  you  are  not  like  my 
brother  ;  you  are  older ;  you  are — you  are  !  no !  no  !  you  are  not 
my  brother  !  " 

"  I  am  much  changed,  Fanny;  and  you  too  !  " 
'  He  smiled  as  he  spoke ;  and  the  smile — sweet  and  pitying — 
thoroughly  changed  the  character  of  his  face,  which  was  ordinarily 
stern,  grave,  and  proud. 

"  I  know  you  now  !  "  exclaimed  Fanny,  in  a  tone  of  wild  joy. 
"  And  you  come  back  from  that  grave  !  My  flowers  have  brought 
you  back  at  last !  I  knew  they  would  !  Brother  !  Brother  !  " 

And  she  threw  herself  on  his  breast  and  burst  into  passionate 
tears.  Then,  suddenly  drawing  herself  back,  she  laid  her  finger 
on  his  arm,  and  looked  up  at  him  beseechingly. 

"  Pray,  now,  is  he  really  dead  ?  He,  my  father  !  He,  too,  was 
lost  like  you.  Can't  he  come  back  again  as  you  have  done  ?  " 

"Do  you  grieve  for  him  still,  then?  Poor  girl  !"  said  the 
stranger,  evasively,  and  seating  himself.  Fanny  continued  to 
listen  for  an  answer  to  her  touching  question  ;  but  finding  that 
none  was  given,  she  stole  away  to  a  corner  of  the  room,  and 
leaned  her  face  on  her  hands,  and  seemed  to  think,  till  at  last,  as 
she  so  sat,  the  tears  began  to  flow  down  her  cheeks,  and  she  wept, 
but  silently  and  unnoticed. 

"  But,  sir,"  said  the  guest,  after  a  short  pause,  "  how  is  this? 
Fanny  tells  me  she  supports  you  by  her  work.  Are  you  so  poor, 
then  ?  Yet  I  left  you  your  son's  bequest ;  and  you,  too,  I  under- 
stood, though  not  rich,  were  not  in  want !  " 

"There  was  a  curse  on  my  gold,"  said  the  old  man,  sternly. 
"  It  was  stolen  from  us." 

There  was  another  pause.     Simon  broke  it. 

"And  you,  young  man, — how  has  it  fared  with  you?  You 
have  prospered,  I  hope?" 

' '  I  am  as  I  have  been  for  years — alone  in  the  world,  without 


294  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

kindred  and  without  friends.  But,  thanks  to  Heaven,  I  am  not  a 
beggar !  " 

"No  kindred  and  no  friend !"  repeated  the  old  man.  "No 
father — no  brother — no  wife — no  sister  !  " 

"None!  No  one  to  care  whether  I  live  or  die,"  answered  the 
stranger,  with  a  mixture  of  pride,  and  sadness  in  his  voice. 
"But,  as  the  song  has  it — 

'  I  care  for  nobody — no,  not  I, 
For  nobody  cares  for  me ! '  " 

There  was  a  certain  pathos  in  the  mockery  with  which  he 
repeated  the  homely  lines,  although,  as  he  did,  he  gathered  him- 
self up,  as  if  conscious  of  a  certain  consolation  and  reliance  on  the 
resources  not  dependent  on  others  which  he  had  found  in  his  own 
strong  limbs  and  his  own  stout  heart. 

At  that  moment  he  felt  a  soft  touch  upon  his  hand,  and  he  saw 
Fanny  looking  at  him  through  the  tears  that  still  flowed. 

"You  have  no  one  to  care  for  you?  Don't  say  so!  Come 
and  live  with  us,  brother;  we'll  care  for  you.  I  have  never  for- 
gotten the  flowers — never!  Do  come!  Fanny  shall  love  you. 
Fanny  can  work  for  three  ! ' ' 

"  And  they  call  her  an  idiot !  "  mumbled  the  old  man,  with  a 
vacant  smile  on  his  lips. 

' '  My  sister !  You  shall  be  my  sister  !  Forlorn  one — whom 
even  Nature  has  fooled  and  betrayed  !  Sister  ! — we,  both  orphans ! 
— Sister!"  exclaimed  that  dark,  stern  man,  passionately,  and 
with  a  broken  voice ;  and  he  opened  his  arms,  and  Fanny,  with- 
out a  blush  or  a  thought  of  shame,  threw  herself  on  his  breast. 
He  kissed  her  forehead  with  a  kiss  that  was,  indeed,  pure  and 
holy  as  a  brother's  :  and  Fanny  felt  that  he  had  left  upon  her 
cheek  a  tear  that  was  not  her  own. 

"Well,"  he  said,  with  an  altered  voice,  and  taking  the  old 
man's  hand,  "What  say  you?  Shall  I  take  up  my  lodging  with 
you  ?  I  have  a  little  money;  I  can  protect  and  aid  you  both.  I 
shall  be  often  away — in  London  or  elsewhere — and  will  not 
intrude  too  much  on  you.  But  you  blind,  and  she — (here  he 
broke  off  the  sentence  abruptly  and  went  on) — you  should  not 
be  left  alone.  And  this  neighborhood,  that  burial-place,  are 
dear  to  me.  I,  too,  Fanny  have  lost  a  parent;  and  that 
grave — ' ' 

He  paused,  and  then  added,  in  a  trembling  voice,  "  And  you 
have  placed  flowers  over  that  grave?  " 

«  Stay  with  us,"  said  the  blind  man;  "not  for  pur  sake,  but 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  295 

your  own.  The  world  is  a  bad  place.  I  have  been  long  sick  of 
the  world.  Yes !  come  and  live  near  the  burial-ground ;  the 
nearer  you  are  to  the  grave,  the  safer  you  are ;  and  you  have  a 
little  money,  you  say  !  " 

"  I  will  come  to-morrow,  then,  I  must  return  now.  To-mor- 
row, Fanny,  we  shall  meet  again." 

"  Must  you  go  ?  "  said  Fanny,  tenderly.  "  But  you  will  come 
again ;  you  know  I  used  to  think  every  one  died  when  he  left  me. 
I  am  wiser  now.  Yet  still,  when  you  do  leave  me,  it  is  true  that 
you  die  for  Fanny!  " 

At  this  moment,  as  the  three  persons  were  grouped,  each  had 
assumed  a  posture  of  form,  an  expression  of  face,  which  a  painter 
of  fitting  sentiment  and  skill  would  have  loved  to  study.  The 
visitor  had  gained  the  door;  and  as  he  stood  there,  his  noble 
height — the  magnificent  strength  and  health  of  his  manhood  in 
its  full  prime — contrasted  alike  the  almost  spectral  debility  of 
extreme  age  and  the  graceful  delicacy  of  Fanny — half-girl,  half- 
child.  There  was  something  foreign  in  his  air,  and  the  half- 
military  habit,  relieved  by  the  red  riband  of  the  Bourbon  knight- 
hood. His  complexion  was  dark  as  that  of  a  Moor,  and  his 
raven  hair  curled  close  to  the  stately  head.  The  soldier-mous- 
tache— thick,  but  glossy  as  silk — shaded  the  firm  lip ;  and  the 
pointed  beard,  assumed  by  the  exiled  Carlists,  heightened  the 
effect  of  the  strong  and  haughty  features  and  the  expression  of 
the  martial  countenance. 

But  as  Fanny's  voice  died  on  his  ear,  he  half  averted  that 
proud  face ;  and  the  dark  eyes — almost  Oriental  in  their  brill- 
iancy and  depth  of  shade — seemed  soft  and  humid.  And  there 
stood  Fanny,  in  a  posture  of  such  unconscious  sadness — such 
childlike  innocence ;  her  arms  drooping,  her  face  wistfully  turned 
to  his,  and  a  half  smile  upon  the  lips,  that  made  still  more  touch- 
ing the  tears  not  yet  dried  upon  her  cheeks.  While  thin,  frail, 
shadowy,  with  white  hair  and  furrowed  cheeks,  the  old  man  fixed 
his  sightless  orbs  on  space ;  and  his  face,  usually  only  animated 
from  the  lethargy  of  advancing  dotage  by  a  certain  querulous 
cynicism,  now  grew  suddenly  earnest,  and  even  thoughtful,  as 
Fanny  spoke  of  Death ! 


296  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  V. 

"  Ulyss.    Time  hath  a  wallet  at  his  back 
Wherein  he  puts  alms  for  oblivion. 
*         *         Perseverance,  dear  my  lord, 
Keeps  honor  bright." — Troilus  and  Cressida. 

I  HAVE  not  sought — as  would  have  been  easy,  by  a  little  ingen- 
uity in  the  earlier  portion  of  this  narrative — whatever  source  of 
vulgar  interest  might  be  derived  from  the  mystery  of  names  and 
persons.  As  in  Charles  Spencer  the  reader  is  allowed  at  a  glance 
to  detect  Sidney  Morton,  so  in  Philip  de  Vaudemont  (the 
stranger  who  rescued  Fanny)  the  reader  at  once  recognizes  the 
hero  of  my  tale ;  but,  since  neither  of  these  young  men  has  a  bet- 
ter right  to  the  name  resigned  than  to  the  name  adopted,  it  will 
be  simpler  and  more  convenient  to  designate  them  by  those  appel- 
lations by  which  they  are  now  known  to  the  world.  In  truth, 
Philip  de  Vaudemont  was  scarcely  the  same  being  as  Philip  Mor- 
ton. In  the  short  visit  he  had  paid  to  the  elder  Gawtrey,  when 
he  consigned  Fanny  to  his  charge,  he  had  given  no  name  ;  and 
the  one  he  now  took  (when,  towards  the  evening  of  the  next  day, 
he  returned  to  Simon's  house)  the  old  man  heard  for  the  first 
time.  Once  more  sunk  into  his  usual  apathy,  Simon,  did  not 
express  any  surprise  that  a  Frenchman  should  be  so  well 
acquainted  with  English — he  scarcely  observed  that  the  name  was 
French.  Simon's  age  seemed  daily  to  bring  him  more  and  more 
to  that  state  when  life  is  mere  mechanism,  and  the  soul,  preparing 
for  its  departure,  no  longer  heeds  the  tenement  that  crumbles 
silently  and  neglected  into  its  lonely  dust.  Vaudemont  came 
with  but  little  luggage,  (for  he  had  an  apartment  also  in  London,) 
and  no  attendant ;  a  single  horse  was  consigned  to  the  stables  of 
an  inn  at  hand,  and  he  seemed,  as  soldiers  are,  more  careful  for 
the  comforts  of  the  animal  than  his  own.  There  was  but  one 
woman  servant  in  the  humble  household,  who  did  all  the  ruder 
work  ;  for  Fanny's  industry  could  afford  it.  The  solitary  servant 
and  the  homely  fare  sufficed  for  the  simple  and  hardy  adventurer. 

Fanny,  with  a  countenance  radiant  with  joy,  took  his  hand  and 
led  him  to  his  room.  Poor  child  !  with  that  instinct  of  woman 
which  never  deserted  her,  she  had  busied  herself  the  whole  day 
in  striving  to  deck  the  chamber  according  to  her  own  notions  of 
comfort.  She  had  stolen  from  her  little  hoard  wherewithal  to 
make  some  small  purchases,  on  which  the  Dowbiggin  of  the 
suburb  had  been  consulted.  And  what  with  flowers  on  the  table, 
and  a  fire  at  the  hearth,  the  room  looked  cheerful. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  297 

She  watched  him  as  he  glanced  around,  and  felt  disappointed 
that  he  did  not  utter  the  admiration  she  expected.  Angry  at  last 
with  the  indifference  which,  in  fact,  as  to  external  accommoda- 
tion, was  habitual  to  him,  she  plucked  his  sleeve,  and  said  : 

"Why  don't  you  speak?  .Is  it  not  nice?  Fanny  did  her 
best." 

"  And  a  thousand  thanks  to  Fanny  !     It  is  all  I  could  wish." 

"There  is  another  room,  bigger  than  this,  but  the  wicked 
woman  who  robbed  us  slept  there ;  and  besides,  you  said  you 
liked  the  churchyard.  See  !  "  and  she  opened  the  window,  and 
pointed  to  the  church-tower  rising  dark  against  the  evening  sky. 

"  This  is  better  than  all !  "  said  Vaudemont ;  and  he  looked 
out  from  the  window  in  a  silent  reverie,  which  Fanny  did  not  dis- 
turb. 

And  now  he  was  settled  !  From  a  career  so  wild,  agitated,  and 
various,  the  adventurer  paused  in  that  humble  resting-nook.  But 
quiet  is  not  repose ;  obscurity  is  not  content.  Often  as,  morn 
and  eve,  he  looked  forth  upon  the  spot,  where  his  mother's  heart, 
unconscious  of  love  and  woe,  mouldered  away,  the  indignant  and 
bitter  feelings  of  the  wronged  outcast  and  the  son  who  could  not 
clear  the  mother's  name,  swept  away  the  subdued  and  gentle  mel- 
ancholy into  which  time  usually  softens  regret  for  the  dead,  and 
with  which  most  of  us  think  of  the  distant  past,  and  the  once  joy- 
ous childhood  ! 

In  this  man's  breast  lay,  concealed  by  his  external  calm,  those 
memories  and  aspirations  which  are  as  strong  as  passions.  In  his 
earlier  years,  when  he  had  been  put  to  hard  shifts  for  existence, 
he  had  found  no  leisure  for  close  and  brooding  reflection  upon 
that  spoliation  of  just  rights — that  calumny  upon  his  mother's 
name — which  had  first  brought  the  Night  into  his  Morning.  His 
resentment  towards  the  Beauforts,  it  is  true,  had  ever  been  an 
intense,  but  a  fitful  and  irregular,  passion.  It  was  exactly  in  pro- 
portion as,  by  those  rare  and  romantic  incidents  which  Fiction  can- 
not invent,  and  which  Narrative  takes  with  diffidence  from  the  great 
Storehouse  of  Real  Life  his  steps  had  ascended  in  the  social  lad- 
der— that  all  which  his  childhood  had  lost — all  which  the  robbers 
of  his  heritage  had  gained,  the  grandeur  and  the  power  of  WEALTH 
— above  all,  the  hourly  and  the  tranquil  happiness  of  a  stainless 
name,  became  palpable  and  distinct.  He  had  loved  Eugenie  as  a 
boy  loves  for  the  first  time  an  accomplished  woman.  He 
regarded  her,  so  refined,  so  gentle,  so  gifted,  with  the  feelings 
clue  to  a  superior  being,  with  an  eternal  recollection  of  the  minis- 
tering angel  that  had  shone  upon  him  when  he  stood  on  the  dark 
abyss.  She  was  the  first  that  had  redeemed  his  fate ;  the  first 


298  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

that  had  guided  aright  his  path  ;  the  first  that  had  tamed  the  sav- 
age at  his  breast — it  was  the  young  lion  charmed  by  the  eyes  of 
Una.  The  outline  of  his  story  had  been  truly  given  at  Lord  Lil- 
burne's.  Despite  his  pride,  which  revolted  from  such  obligations 
to  another,  and  a  woman — which  disliked  and  struggled  against  a 
disguise  which  at  once  and  alone  saved  him  from  the  detection  of 
the  past  and  the  terrors  of  the  future — he  had  yielded  to  her,  the 
wise  and  the  gentle,  as  one  whose  judgment  he  could  not  doubt ; 
and,  indeed,  the  slanderous  falsehoods  circulated  by  the  lackey, 
to  whose  discretion,  the  night  of  Gawtrey's  death,  Eugenie  had 
preferred  to  confide  her  own  honor,  rather  than  another's  life, 
had  (as  Liancourt  rightly  stated)  left  Philip  no  option  but  that 
which  Madame  de  Merville  deemed  the  best,  whether  for  her  hap- 
piness or  her  good  name.  Then  had  followed  a  brief  season — the 
holiday  of  his  life — the  season  of  young  hope  and  passion,  of 
brilliancy  and  joy,  closing  by  that  abrupt  death  which  again  left 
him  lonely  in  the  world. 

When,  from  the  grief  that  succeeded  to  the  death  of  Eugenie, 
he  woke  to  find  himself  amidst  the  strange  faces  and  exciting 
scenes  of  an  Oriental  court,  he  turned  with  hard  and  disgustful 
contempt  from  Pleasure,  as  an  infidelity  to  the  dead.  Ambition 
crept  over  him ;  his  mind  hardened  as  his  cheek  bronzed 
under  those  burning  suns ;  his  hardy  frame,  his  energies  prema- 
turely awakened,  his  constitutional  disregard  to  danger,  made  him 
a  brave  and  skilful  soldier.  He  acquired  reputation  and  rank. 
But,  as  time  went  on,  the  ambition  took  a  higher  flight;  he  felt 
his  sphere  circumscribed  ;  the  Eastern  indolence  that  filled  up  the 
long  intervals  between  Eastern  action  chafed  a  temper  never  at 
rest :  he  returned  to  France :  his  reputation,  Liancourt's  friend- 
ship, and  the  relations  of  Eugenie — grateful,  as  has  before  been 
implied,  for  the  generosity  with  which  he  surrendered  the  princi- 
pal part  of  her  donation — opened  for  him  a  new  career,  but  one 
painful  and  galling.  In  the  Indian  court  there  was  no  question 
of  his  birth — one  adventurer  was  equal  with  the  rest.  But  in 
Paris,  a  man  attempting  to  rise  provoked  all  the  sarcasm  of  wit, 
all  the  cavils  of  party ;  and  in  polished  and  civil  life,  what  valor 
has  weapons  against  a  jest  ?  Thus,  in  civilization,  all  the  pas- 
sions that  spring  from  humiliated  self-love  and  baffled  aspiration 
again  preyed  upon  his  breast.  He  saw  then  that  the  more  he 
struggled  from  obscurity,  the  more  acute  would  become  research 
into  his  true  origin  ;  and  his  writhing  pride  almost  stung  to  death 
his  ambition.  To  succeed  in  life  by  regular  means  was  indeed 
difficult  for  this  man;  always  recoiling  from  the  name  he  bore; 
always  strong  in  the  hope  yet  to  regain  that  to  which  he  con- 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  299 

ceived  himself  entitled ;  cherishing  that  pride  of  country  which 
never  deserts  the  native  of  a  Free  State,  however  harsh  a  parent 
she  may  have  proved  ;  and,  above  all,  whatever  his  ambition  and 
his  passions,  taking,  from  the  very  misfortunes  he  had  known,  an 
indomitable  belief  in  the  ultimate  justice  of  heaven — he  had 
refused  to  sever  the  last  ties  that  connected  him  with  his  lost  heri- 
age  and  his  forsaken  land  ;  he  refused  to  be  naturalized  ;  to  make 
the  name  he  bore  legally  undisputed  ;  he  was  contented  to  be  an 
alien.  Neither  was  Vaudemont  fitted  exactly  for  that  crisis  in  the 
social  world  when  the  men  of  journals  and  talk  bustle  aside  the 
men  of  action.  He  had  not  cultivated  literature,  he  had  no  book- 
knowledge — the  world  "had  been  his  school,  and  stern  life  his 
teacher.  Still,  eminently  skilled  in  those  physical  accomplish- 
ments which  men  admire  and  soldiers  covet,  calm  and  self-pos- 
sessed in  manner,  of  great  personal  advantages,  of  much  ready 
talent  and  of  practised  observation  in  character,  he  continued  to 
breast  the  obstacles  around  him,  and  to  establish  himself  in  the 
favor  of  those  in  power.  It  was  natural  to  a  person  so  reared  and 
circumstanced  to  have  no  sympathy  with  what  is  called  the  popu- 
lar cause.  He  was  no  citizen  in  the  state, — he  was  a  stranger  in 
the  land.  He  had  suffered,  and  still  suffered,  too  much  from 
mankind,  to  have  that  philanthropy,  sometimes  visionary  but 
always  noble,  which,  in  fact,  generally  springs  from  the  studies 
we  cultivate,  not  in  the  forum,  but  the  closet.  Men,  alas !  too 
often  lose  the  Democratic  Enthusiasm  in  proportion  as  they  find 
reason  to  suspect  or  despise  their  kind.  And  if  there  were  not 
hopes  for  the  Future,  which  this  hard,  practical,  daily  life  does 
not  suffice  to  teach  us,  the  vision  and  the  glory  that  belong  to  the 
Great  Popular  Creed,  dimmed  beneath  the  injustice,  the  follies, 
and  the  vices  of  the  world  as  it  is,  would  fade  into  the  lukewarm 
sectarianism  of  temporary  Party.  Moreover,  Vaudemont's  habits 
of  thought  and  reasoning  were  those  of  the  camp,  confirmed  by 
the  systems  familiar  to  him  in  the  East :  he  regarded  the  popu- 
lace as  a  soldier  enamoured  of  discipline  and  order  usually  does. 
His  theories,  therefore,  or  rather  his  ignorance  of  what  is  sound 
in  theory,  went  with  Charles  the  Tenth  in  his  excesses,  but  not 
with  the  timidity  which  terminated  those  excesses  by  dethrone- 
ment and  disgrace.  Chafed  to  the  heart,  gnawed  with  proud 
grief,  he  obeyed  the  royal  mandates,  and  followed  the  exiled 
monarch  :  his  hopes  overthrown,  his  career  in  France  annihilated 
forever.  But  on  entering  England,  his  temper,  confident  and 
ready  of  resource,  fastened  itself  on  new  food.  In  the  land 
where  he  had  no  name  he  might  yet  rebuild  his  fortunes.  It  was 
an  arduous  effort ;  an  improbable  hope ;  but  the  words  heard  by 


300 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 


the  bridge  of  Paris — words  that  had  often  cheered  him  in  his 
exile  through  hardships  and  through  dangers  which  it  is  unneces- 
sary to  our  narrative  to  detail — yet  rung  again  in  his  ear,  as  he 
leaped  on  his  native  land — "  Time,  Faith,  Energy." 

While  such  his  character  in  the  larger  and  more  distant  rela- 
tions of  life,  in  the  closer  circles  of  companionship  many  rare  and 
noble  qualities  were  visible.  It  is  true  that  he  was  stern,  perhaps 
imperious — of  a  temper  that  always  struggled  for  command ;  but 
he  was  deeply  susceptible  of  kindness,  and  if  feared  by  those  who 
opposed,  loved  by  .those  who  served  him.  About  his  character 
was  that  mixture  of  tenderness  and  fierceness  which  belonged,  of 
old,  to  the  descriptions  of  the  warrior.  Though  so  little  lettered, 
Life  had  taught  him  a  certain  poetry  of  sentiment  and  idea — 
more  poetry,  perhaps,  in  the  silent  thoughts  that,  in  his  happier 
moments,  filled  his  solitude,  than  in  half  the  pages  that  his  brother 
had  read  and  written  by  the  dreaming  lake.  A  certain  largeness 
of  idea  and  nobility  of  impulse  often  made  him  act  the  sentiments 
of  which  bookmen  "write.  With  all  his  passions,  he  held  licen- 
tiousness in  disdain ;  with  all  his  ambition  for  the  power  of  wealth, 
he  despised  its  luxttry.  Simple,  masculine,  severe,  abstemious, 
he  was  of  that  mould  in  which,  in  earlier  times,  the  successful 
men  of  action  have  been  cast.  But  to  successful  action,  circum- 
stance is  more  necessary  than  to  triumphant  study. 

It  was  to  be  expected  that,  in  proportion  as  he  had  been  famil- 
iar with  a  purer  and  nobler  life,  he  should  look  with  great  and 
deep  self-humiliation  at  his  early  association  with  Gawtrey.  He 
was  in  this  respect  more  severe  on  himself  than  any  other  mind 
ordinarily  just  and  candid  would  have  been,  when  fairly  surveying 
the  circumstances  of  penury,  hunger,  and  despair,  which  had 
driven  him  to  Gawtrey's  roof,  the  imperfect  nature  of  his  early 
education ;  the  boyish  trust  and  affection  he  had  felt  for  his  pro- 
tector; and  his  own  ignorance  of,  and  exemption  from,  all  the 
worse  practices  of  that  unhappy  criminal.  But  still,  when,  with 
the  knowledge  he  had  now  acquired,  the  man  looked  calmly  back, 
his  cheek  burned  with  remorseful  shame  at  his  unreflecting  com- 
panionship in  a  life  of  subterfuge  and  equivocation,  the  true  nature 
of  which,  the  boy  (so  circumstanced  as  we  have  shown  him)  might 
be  forgiven  for  not  at  that  time  comprehending.  Two  advantages 
resulted,  however,  from  the  error  and  the  remorse:  first,  the 
humiliation  it  brought,  curbed,  in  some  measure,  a  pride  that 
might  otherwise  have  been  arrogant  and  unamiable ;  and,  secondly, 
as  I  have  before  intimated,  his  profound  gratitude  to  Heaven  for 
his  deliverance  from  the  snares  that  had  beset  his  youth,  gave  his 
future  the  guide  of  an  earnest  and  heartfelt  faith,  He  acknowl- 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  30! 

edged  in  life  no  such  thing  as  accident.  Whatever  his  struggles, 
whatever  his  melancholy,  whatever  his  sense  of  worldly  wrong,  he 
never  despaired ;  for  nothing  now  could  shake  his  belief  in  one 
directing  Providence. 

The  ways  and  habits  of  Vaudemont  were  not  at  discord  with 
those  of  the  quiet  household  in  which  he  was  now  a  guest.  Like 
most  men  of  strong  frames,  and  accustomed  to  active,  not  studious 
pursuits,  he  rose  early ;  and  usually  rode  to  London,  to  come  back 
late  at  noon  to  their  frugal  meal.  And  if  again,  perhaps  after 
the  hour  when  Fanny  and  Simon  retired,  he  would  often  return  to 
London,  his  own  pass-key  re-admitted  him,  at  whatever  time  he 
came  back,  without  disturbing  the  sleep  of  the  household.  Some- 
times, when  the  sun  began  to  decline,  if  the  air  was  warm,  the 
old  man  would  crawl  out,  leaning  on  that  strong  arm,  through  the 
neighboring  lanes,  ever  returning  through  the  lonely  burial-ground ; 
or  when  the  blind  host  clung  to  his  fireside,  and  composed  him- 
self to  sleep,  Philip  would  saunter  forth  along  with  Fanny ;  and 
on  the  days  when  she  went  to  sell  her  work,  or  select  her  pur- 
chases, he  always  made  a  point  of  attending  her.  And  her  cheek 
wore  a  flush  of  pride  when  she  saw  him  carrying  her  little  basket, 
or  waiting  without,  in  musing  patience,  while  she  performed  her 
commissions  in  the  shops.  Though,  in  reality,  Fanny's  intellect 
was  ripening  within,  yet  still  the  surface  often  misled  the  eye  as 
to  the  depths.  It  was  rather  that  something  yet  held  back  the 
faculties  from  their  growth,  than  that  the  faculties  themselves 
were  wanting.  Her  weakness  was  more  of  the  nature  of  the 
infant's  than  of  one  afflicted  with  incurable  imbecility.  For 
instance,  she  managed  the  little  household  with  skill  and  pru- 
dence ;  she  could  calculate  in  her  head  as  rapidly  as  Vaudemont 
himself,  the  arithmetic  necessary  to  her  simple  duties ;  she  knew 
the  value  of  money,  which  is  more  than  some  of  us  wise  folk  do. 
Her  skill,  even  in  her  infancy  so  remarkable,  in  various  branches 
of  female  handiwork,  was  carried,  not  only  by  perseverance,  but 
by  invention  and  peculiar  talent,  to  a  marvellous  and  exquisite 
perfection.  Her  embroidery,  especially  in  what  was  then  more 
rare  than  at  present,  viz.,  flowers  on  silk,  was  much  in  request 
among  the  great  modistes  of  London,  to  whom  it  found  its  way 
through  the  agency  of  Miss  Semper.  So  that  all  this  had  enabled 
her,  for  years,  to  provide  every  necessary  comfort  of  life  for  her- 
self and  her  blind  protector.  And  her  care  for  the  old  man  was 
beautiful  in  its  minuteness,  its  vigilance.  Wherever  her  heart 
was  interested,  there  never  seemed  a  deficiency  of  mind.  Vau- 
demont was  touched  to  see  how  much  of  affectionate  and  pitying 
respect  she  appeared  to  enjoy  in  the  neighborhood,  especially 


302  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

among  the  humbler  classes — even  the  beggar  who  swept  the  cross- 
ings, did  not  beg  of  her,  but  bade  God  bless  her  as  she  passed  ; 
and  the  rude,  discontented  artisan  would  draw  himself  from  the 
wall,  and  answer,  with  a  softened  brow,  the  smile  with  which  the 
harmless  one  charmed  his  courtesy.  In  fact,  whatever  attraction 
she  took  from  her  youth,  her  beauty,  her  misfortune,  and  her 
affecting  industry,  was  heightened,  in  the  eyes  of  the  poorer 
neighbors,  by  many  little  traits  of  charity  and  kindness;  many  a 
sick  child  had  she  tended,  and  many  a  breadless  board  had  stolen 
something  from  the  stock  set  aside  for  her  father's  grave. 

"  Don't  you  think,"  she  once  whispered  to  Vaudemont,  "  that 
God  attends  to  us  more  if  we  are  good  to  those  who  are  sick  and 
hungry  ? ' ' 

"  Certainly,  we  are  taught  to  think  so." 

"Well,  I'll  tell  you  a  secret — don't  tell  again.  Grandpapa 
once  said  that  my  father  had  done  bad  things  ;  now,  if  Fanny  is 
good  to  those  she  can  help,  I  think  that  God  will  hear  her  more 
kindly  when  she  prays  him  to  forgive  what  her  father  did.  Do 
you  think  so  too  ?  Do  say — you  are  so  wise !  " 

' '  Fanny,  you  are  wiser  than  all  of  us ;  and  I  feel  myself  better 
and  happier  when  I  hear  you  speak." 

There  were,  indeed,  many  moments  when  Vaudemont  thought 
that  her  deficiencies  of  intellect  might  have  been  repaired,  long 
since,  by  skilful  culture  and  habitual  companionship  with  those 
of  her  own  age  ;  from  which  companionship,  however,  Fanny, 
even  when  at  school,  had  shrunk  aloof.  At  other  moments,  there 
was  something  so  absent  and  distracted  about  her,  or  so  fantastic 
and  incoherent,  that  Vaudemont,  with  the  man's  hard,  worldly 
eye,  read  in  it  nothing  but  melancholy  confusion.  Nevertheless, 
if  the  skein  of  ideas  was  entangled,  each  thread  in  itself  was  a 
thread  of  gold. 

Fanny's  great  object — her  great  ambition,  her  one  hope — was  a 
tomb  for  her  supposed  father.  Whether  from  some  of  that  early 
religion  attached  to  the  grave,  which  is  most  felt  in  Catholic 
countries,  and  which  she  had  imbibed  at  the  convent ;  or  from 
her  residence  so  near  the  burial-ground,  and  the  affection  with 
which  she  regarded  the  spot ;  whatever  the  cause,  she  had  cher- 
ished for  some  years,  as  young  maidens  usually  cherish  the  desire 
of  the  Altar,  the  dream  of  the  Grave-stone.  But  the  hoard  was 
amassed  so  slowly  now  old  Gawtrey  was  attacked  by  illness ;  now 
there  was  some  little  difficulty  in  the  rent ;  now  some  fluctuation 
in  the  price  of  work  ;  and  now,  and  more  often  than  all,  some 
demand  on  her  charity,  which  interfered  with,  and  drew  from, 
the  pious  savings.  This  was  a  sentiment  in  which  her  new  friend 


IMGHT   AND   MORNING.  363 

sympathized  deeply ;  for  he,  too,  remembered  that  his  first  gold 
had  bought  that  humble  stone  which  still  preserved  upon  the 
earth  the  memory  of  his  mother. 

Meanwhile,  days  crept  on,  and  no  new  violence  was  offered  to 
Fanny.  Vaudemont  learned,  then,  by  little  and  little — and 
Fanny's  account  was  very  confused — the  nature  of  the  danger 
she  had  run. 

It  seemed  that  one  day,  tempted  by  the  fineness  of  the  weather 
up  the  road  that  led  from  the  suburb  farther  into  the  country, 
Fanny  was  stopped  by  a  gentleman  in  a  carriage,  who  accosted 
her,  as  she  said,  very  kindly :  and  after  several  questions,  which 
she  answered  with  her  usual  unsuspecting  innocence,  learned  her 
trade,  insisted  on  purchasing  some  articles  of  work  which  she  had 
at  the  moment  in  her  basket,  and  promised  to  procure  her  a  con- 
stant purchaser,  upon  much  better  terms  than  she  had  hitherto 
obtained,  if  she  would  call  at  the  house  of  a  Mrs.  West,  about  a 
mile  from  the  suburb  towards  London.  This  she  promised  to  do, 
and  this  she  did,  according  to  the  address  he  gave  her.  She  was 
admitted  to  a  lady  more  gaily  dressed  than  Fanny  had  ever  seen 
a  lady  before ;  the  gentleman  was  also  present ;  they  both  loaded 
her  with  compliments,  and  bought  her  work  at  a  price  which 
seemed  about  to  realize  all  the  hopes  of  the  poor  girl  as  to  the 
grave-stone  for  William  Gawtrey, — as  if  his  evil  fate  pursued  that 
wild  man  beyond  the  grave,  and  his  very  tomb  was  to  be  pur- 
chased by  the  gold  of  the  polluter  !  The  lady  then  appointed 
her  to  call  again  ;  but  meanwhile,  she  met  Fanny  in  the  streets, 
and  while  she  was  accosting  her,  it  fortunately  chanced  that  Miss 
Semper  the  milliner  passed  that  way ;  turned  round,  looked  hard 
at  the  lady,  used  very  angry  language  to  her,  seized  Fanny's 
hand,  led  her  away,  while  the  lady  slunk  off ;  and  told  her  that 
the  said  lady  was  a  very  bad  woman,  and  that  Fanny  must  never 
speak  to  her  again.  Fanny  most  cheerfully  promised  this.  And, 
in  fact,  the  lady,  probably  afraid,  whether  of  the  mob  or  the 
magistrates,  never  again  came  near  her. 

"  And,"  said  Fanny,  "  I  gave  the  money  they  had  both  given 
to  me  to  Miss  Semper,  who  said  she  would  send  it  back. ' ' 

' '  You  did  right,  Fanny  ;  and  as  you  made  one  promise  to  Miss 
Semper,  so  you  must  make  me  one ;  never  to  stir  from  home 
again  without  me  or  some  other  person.  No,  no  other  person — 
only  me.  I  will  give  up  everything  else  to  go  with  you." 

"  Will  you  ?  Oh,  yes.  I  promise !  I  used  to  like  going  alone, 
but  that  was  before  you  came,  brother." 

And  as  Fanny  kept  her  promise,  it  would  have  been  a  bold 


304  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

gallant  indeed  who  would  have  ventured  to  molest  her  by  the  side 
of  that  stately  and  strong  protector. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

"  Timon.     Each  thing's  a  thief: 

The  laws,  your  curb  and  whip,  in  their  rough  power 
Have  uncheck'd  theft. 

***** 
The  sweet  degrees  that  this  brief  world  affords, 
To  such  as  may  the  passive  drugs  of  it 
Freely  command." — Timon  of  Athens. 

ON  the  day  and  at  the  hour  fixed  for  the  interview  with  the 
stranger  who  had  visited  Mr.  Beaufort,  Lord  Lilburne  was  seated 
in  the  library  of  his  brother-in-law  ;  and  before  the  elbow-chair, 
on  which  he  lolled  carelessly,  stood  our  old  friend  Mr.  Sharp,  of 
Bow  Street  notability. 

"  Mr.  Sharp,"  said  the  peer,  "  I  have  sent  for  you  to  do  me  a 
little  favor.  I  expect  a  man  here  who  professes  to  give  Mr.  Beau- 
fort, my  brother-in-law,  some  information  about  a  lawsuit.  It  is 
necessary  to  know  the  exact  value  of  his  evidence.  I  wish  you  to 
ascertain  all  particulars  about  him.  Be  so  good  as  to  seat  your- 
self in  the  porter's  chair  in  the  hall  j  note  him  when  he  enters, 
unobserved  yourself;  but  as  he  is  probably  a  stranger  to  you,  note 
him  still  more  when  he  leaves  the  house ;  follow  him  at  a  dis- 
tance; find  out  where  he  lives,  whom  he  associates  with,  where 
he  visits,  their  names  and  directions,  what  his  character  and  call- 
ing are — in  a  word,  everything  you  can,  and  report  to  me  each 
evening.  Dog  him  well,  never  lose  sight  of  him ;  you  will  be 
handsomely  paid.  You  understand?  " 

"Ah  !  "  said  Mr.  Sharp,  "  leave  me  alone,  my  lord.  Been 
employed  before  by  your  lordship's  brother-in-law.  We  knows 
what's  what." 

"I  don't  doubt  it.  To  your  post.  I  expect  him  every  mo- 
ment." 

And,  in  fact,  Mr.  Sharp  had  only  just  ensconced  himself  in  the 
porter's  chair  when  the  stranger  knocked  at  the  door  ;  in  another 
moment  he  was  shown  in  to  Lord  Lilburne. 

"Sir,"  said  his  lordship,  without  rising,  "be  so  good  as  to 
take  a  chair.  Mr.  Beaufort  is  obliged  to  leave  town  ;  he  has 
asked  me  to  see  you :  I  am  one  of  his  family — his  wife  is  my 
sister ;  you  may  be  as  frank  with  me  as  with  him, — more  so,  per- 
haps." 


NIGHT   AND   MORNItf(J.  ^65 

"  I  beg  the  favor  of  your  irame,  sir,"  said  the  stranger,  adjust- 
ing his  collar. 

'  Yours  first — business  is  business." 
'Well,  then,  Captain  Smith." 
'  Of  what  regiment?  " 
'Half-pay." 

'  I  am  Lord  Lilburne.  Your  name  is  Smith — humph  !  "  added 
the  peer,  looking  over  some  notes  before  him.  "  I  see  it  is  also 
the  name  of  the  witness  appealed  to  by  Mrs.  Morton — humph !  " 

At  this  remark,  and  still  more  at  the  look  which  accompanied 
it,  the  countenance,  before  impudent  and  complacent,  of  Captain 
Smith  fell  into  visible  embarrassment ;  he  cleared  his  throat  and 
said,  with  a  little  hesitation, 

"  My  lord,  that  witness  is  living  !  " 

' '  No  doubt  of  it ;  witnesses  never  die  where  property  is  con- 
cerned and  imposture  intended." 

At  this  moment  the  servant  entered,  and  placed  a  little  note, 
quaintly  folded,  before  Lord  Lilburne.  He  glanced  at  it  in  sur- 
prise, opened,  and  read  as  follows,  in  pencil : 

"  MY  LORD, — I  knows  the  man  ;  take  caer  of  him  ;  he  is  as  big 
a  roge  as  ever  stept ;  he  was  transported  some  three  year  back, 
and  unless  his  time  has  been  shortened  by  the  Home,  he's  absent 
without  leve.  We  used  to  call  him  Dashing  Jerry.  That  ere 
youngster  we  went  arter,  by  Mr.  Bofort's  wish,  was  a  pal  of  his. 
Scuze  the  liberty  I  take,  J.  SHARP." 

While  Lord  Lilburne  held  this  effusion  to  the  candle,  and 
spelled  his  way  through  it,  Captain  Smith,  recovering  his  self- 
composure,  thus  proceeded : 

"Imposture,  my  lord  !  Imposture  !  I  really  don't  understand. 
Your  lordship  really  seems  so  suspicious,  that  it  is  quite  uncom- 
fortable. I  am  sure  it  is  all  the  same  to  me ;  and  if  Mr.  Beaufort 
does  not  think  proper  to  see  me  'mself,  why  I'd  best  make  my 
bow." 

And  Captain  Smith  rose. 

"  Stay  a  moment,  sir.  What  Mr.  Beaufort  may  yet  do,  I  can- 
not say;  but  I  know  this:  you  stand  charged  of  a  very  grave 
offence,  and  if  your  witness  or  witnesses — you  may  have  fifty,  for 
what  I  care — are  equally  guilty,  so  much  the  worse  for  them." 

"My  lord,  I  really  don't  comprehend." 

"Then  I  will  be  more  plain.  I  accuse  you  of  devising  an 
infamous  falsehood  for  the  purpose  of  extorting  money.  Let  your 
witnesses  appear  in  court,  and  I  promise  that  you,  they,  and  the 
young  man,  Mr.  Morton,  whose  claim  they  set  up,  shall  be indict- 
for  conspiracy — conspiracy,  if  accompanied  fas  in  the  case  of  your 
29 


306  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

witnesses)  with  perjury,  of  the  blackest  die.  Mr.  Smith,  I  know 
you  ;  and  before  ten  o'clock  to-morrow  I  shall  know  also  if  you 
had  His  Majesty's  leave  to  quit  the  colonies !  Ah  !  I  am  plain 
enough  now,  I  see." 

And  Lord  Lilburne  threw  himself  back  in  his  chair,  and  coldly 
c  ntemplared  the  white  face  and  dismayed  expression  of  the  crest- 
fallen captain.  That  most  worthy  person,  after  a  pause  of  con- 
fusion, amaze,  and  fear,  made  an  involuntary  stride,  with  a  men- 
acing gesture,  towards  Lilburne  ;  the  peer  quietly  placed  his  hand 
on  the  bell. 

"One  moment  more,"  said  the  latter;  "  if  I  ring  this  bell,  it 
is  to  place  you  in  custody.  Let  Mr.  Beaufort  but  see  you  here  once 
again  ;  nay,  let  him  but  hear  another  word  of  this  pretended  law- 
suit, and  you  return  to  the  colonies.  Pshaw  !  Frown  not  at  me, 
sir  !  A  Bow  Street  officer  is  in  the  hall.  Begone  !  No,  stop  one 
moment,  and  take  a  lesson  in  life.  Never  again  attempt  to  threat- 
en people  of  property  and  station.  Around  every  rich  man  is  a 
wall — better  not  run  your  head  against  it." 

"  But  I  swear  solemnly,"  cried  the  knave,  with  an  emphasis  so 
startling  that  it  carried  with  it  the  appearance  of  truth,  "that  the 
marriage  did  take  place." 

"And  I  say,  no  less  solemnly,  that  any  one  who  swears  it  in 
a  court  of  law  shall  be  prosecuted  for  perjury  !  Bah  !  you  are  a 
sorry  rogue,  after  all !  " 

And  with  an  air  of  supreme  and  half-compassionate  contempt, 
Lord  Lilburne  turned  away  and  stirred  the  fire.  Captain  Smith 
muttered  and  fumbled  a  moment  with  his  gloves,  then  shrugged 
his  shoulders  and  sneaked  out. 

That  night  Lord  Lilburne  again  received  his  friends,  and 
amongst  his  guests  came  Vaudemont.  Lilburne  was  one  who  liked 
the  study  of  character,  especially  the  character  of  men  wrestling 
against  the  world.  Wholly  free  from  every  species  of  ambition, 
he  seemed  to  reconcile  himself  to  his  apathy  by  examining  into 
the  disquietude,  the  mortification,  the  heart's  wear  and  tear,  which 
are  the  lot  of  the  ambitious.  Like  the  spider  in  his  hole,  he  watch- 
ed with  hungry  pleasure  the  flies  struggling  in  the  web  ;  through 
whose  slimy  labyrinth  he  walked  with  an  easy  safety.  Perhaps,  one 
reason  why  he  loved  gaming  was  less  from  the  joy  of  winning  than 
the  philosophical  complacency  with  which  he  feasted  on  the  emotions 
of  those  who  lost :  always  serene,  and,  except  in  debauch,  always 
passionless, — Majendie,  tracing  the  experiments  of  science  in  the 
agonies  of  some  tortured  dog,  could  not  be  more  wrapt  in  the 
science,  and  more  indifferent  to  the  dog,  than  Lord  Lilburne, 
ruining  a  victim,  in  the  analysis  of  human  passions, — stoical  in 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  36? 

the  writhings  of  the  wretch  whom  he  tranquilly  dissected.  He 
wished  to  win  money  of  Vaudemont;  to  ruin  this  man,  who  pre- 
sumed to  be  more  generous  than  other  people ;  to  see  a  bold 
adventurer  submitted  to  the  wheel  of  Fortune  which  reigns  in  a 
pack  of  cards ;  and  all,  of  course,  without  the  least  hate  to  the 
man  whom  he  then  saw  for  the  first  time.  On  the  contrary,  he 
felt  a  respect  for  Vaudemont.  Like  most  worldly  men,  Lord  Lil- 
burne  was  prepossessed  in  favor  of  those  who  seek  to  rise  in  life : 
and  like  men  who  have  excelled  in  manly  and  athletic  exercises,  he 
was  also  prepossessed  in  favor  of  those  who  appeared  fitted  for  the 
same  success. 

Liancourt  took  aside  his  friend,  as  Lord  Lilburne  was  talking 
with  his  other  guests : 

"  I  need  not  caution  you,  who  never  play,  not  to  commit  your- 
self to  Lord  Lilburne's  tender  mercies;  remember,  he  is  an  admir- 
able player." 

"Nay,"  answered  Vaudemont,  "I  want  to  know  this  man :  I 
have  reasons,  which  alone  induce  me  to  enter  his  house.  I  can 
afford  to  venture  something,  because  I  wish  to  see  if  I  can  gain 
something  for  one  dear  to  me.  And  for  the  rest  (he  muttered)  I 
know  him  too  well  not  to  be  on  my  guard."  With  that  he  joined 
Lord  Lilburne's  group,  and  accepted  the  invitation  to  the  card- 
table.  At  supper  Vaudemont  conversed  more  than  was  habitual 
to  him  :  he  especially  addressed  himself  to  his  host,  and  listened, 
with  great  attention,  to  Lilburne's  caustic  comments  upon  every 
topic  successively  started.  And  whether  it  was  the  art  of  De 
Vaudemont,  or  from  an  interest  that  Lord  Lilburne  took  in  study- 
ing what  was  to  him  a  new  character,  or  whether  that,  both  men 
excelling  peculiarly  in  all  masculine  accomplishments,  their  con- 
versation was  of  a  nature  that  was  more  attractive  to  themselves 
than  to  others  ;  it  so  happened,  that  they  were  still  talking  while 
the  daylight  already  peered  through  the  window-curtains. 

"And  I  have  outstayed  all  your  guests,"  said  De  Vaudemont, 
glancing  round  the  emptied  room. 

"It  is  the  best  compliment  you  could  pay  me.  Another  night 
we  can  enliven  our  tete-a-tete  with  ecarte ;  though  at  your  age, 
and  with  your  appearance,  I  am  surprised,  Monsieur  de  Vaude- 
mont, that  you  are  fond  of  play :  I  should  have  thought  that  it 
was  not  in  a  pack  of  cards  that  you  looked  for  hearts.  But  per- 
haps you  are  blase  betimes  of  the  beau  sexe." 

"Yet  your  lordship's  devotion  to  it  is,  perhaps,  as  great  now 
as  ever  ?  ' ' 

"  Mine?  No,  not  as  ever-     To  different  ages  different  degrees. 


308  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

At  your  age  I  wooed ;  at  mine  I  purchase — the  better  plan  of  the 
two  :  it  does  not  take  up  half  so  much  time." 

"  Your  marriage,  I  think,  Lord  Lilburne,  was  not  blessed  with 
children.  Perhaps  sometimes  you  feel  the  want  of  them?  " 

"  If  I  did,  I  could  have  them  by  the  dozen.  Other  ladies  have 
been  more  generous  in  that  department  than  the  late  Lady  Lil- 
burne, Heaven  rest  her  !  " 

"And,"  said  Vaudemont,  fixing  his  eyes  with  some  earnest- 
ness on  his  host,  "  if  you  were  really  persuaded  that  you  had  a 
child,  or  perhaps  a  grandchild — the  mother  one  whom  you  loved 
in  your  first  youth — a  child  affectionate,  beautiful,  and  especially 
needing  your  care  and  protection,  would  you  not  suffer  that  child, 
though  illegitimate,  to  supply  to  you  the  want  of  filial  affec- 
tion?" 

"  Filial  affection,  man  cher  ! "  repeated  Lord  Lilburne,  "need- 
ing my  care  and  protection  !  Pshaw  !  In  other  words,  would  I 
give  board  and  lodging  to  some  young  vagabond  who  was  good 
enough  to  say  he  was  son  to  Lord  Lilburne?  " 

"  But  if  you  were  convinced  that  the  claimant  were  your  son, 
or  perhaps  your  daughter — a  tenderer  name  of  the  two,  and  a 
more  helpless  claimant?  " 

' '  My  dear  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  you  are  doubtless  a  man 
of  gallantry  and  of  the  world.  If  the  children  whom  the  ^aw 
forces  on  one  are,  nine  times  out  of  ten,  such  damnable  plagues, 
judge  if  one  would  father  those  whom  the  law  permits  us  to  dis- 
own !  Natural  children  are  the  Parias  of  the  world,  and  / — am 
one  of  the  Brahmans. ' ' 

"  But,"  persisted  Vaudemont,  "  forgive  me  if  I  press  the  ques- 
tion farther.  Perhaps  I  seek  from  your  wisdom  a  guide  to  my 
own  conduct :  suppose,  then,  a  man  had  loved,  had  wronged, 
the  mother ;  suppose  that  in  the  child  he  saw  one  who,  without 
his  aid,  might  be  exposed  to  every  curse  with  which  the  Parias 
(true,  the  Parias  /)  of  the  world  are  too  often  visited,  and  who 
•with  his  aid  might  become,  as  age  advanced,  his  companion,  his 
nurse,  his  comforter — " 

"Tush!"  interrupted  Lilburne,  with  some  impatience;  "I 
know  not  how  our  conversation  fell  on  such  a  topic,  but  if  you 
really  ask  my  opinion  in  reference  to  any  case  in  practical  life, 
you  shall  have  it.  Look  you,  then,  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  no 
man  has  studied  the  art  of  happiness  more  than  I  have ;  and  I 
will  tell  you  the  great  secret — have  as  few  ties  as  possible.  Nurse  ! 
Pooh  !  you  or  I  could  hire  one  by  the  week  a  thousand  times 
more  useful  and  careful  than  a  bore  of  a  child.  Comforter !  A  man 
of  mind  never  wants  comfort.  And  there  is  no  such  thing  as 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  309 

sorrow  while  we  have  health  and  money,  and  don't  care  a  straw 
for  anybody  in  the  world.  If  you  choose  to  love  people,  their 
health  and  circumstances,  if  either  go  wrong,  can  fret  you  :  that 
opens  many  avenues  to  pain.  Never  live  alone,  but  always  feel 
alone.  You  think  this  unamiable,  possibly.  I  am  no  hypocrite, 
and,  for  my  part,  I  never  affect  to  be  anything  but  what  I  am — 
John  Lilburne." 

As  the  peer  thus  spoke,  Vaudemont,  leaning  against  the  door, 
contemplated  him  with  a  strange  mixture  of  interest  and  disgust. 
"  And  John  Lilburne  is  thought  a  great  man,  and  William  Gaw- 
trey  was  a  great  rogue.  You  don't  conceal  your  heart  ?  No,  I 
understand.  Wealth  and  power  have  no  need  of  hypocrisy : 
you  are  the  man  of  vice,  Gawtrey,  the  man  of  crime.  You  never 
sin  against  the  law,  he  was  a  felon  by  his  trade.  And  the  felon 
saved  from  vice  the  child,  and  from  want  the  grandchild  (your 
flesh  and  blood)  whom  you  disown  :  which  will  Heaven  consider 
the  worse  man  ?  No,  poor  Fanny !  I  see  I  am  wrong.  If  he 
would  own  you,  I  would  not  give  you  up  to  the  ice  of  such  a 
soul :  better  the  blind  man  than  the  dead  heart !  " 

"Well,  Lord  Lilburne,"  said  De  Vaudemont  aloud,  shaking 
off  his  reverie,  "  I  must  own  that  your  philosophy  seems  to  me 
the  wisest  for  yourself.  For  a  poor  man  it  might  be  different — 
the  poor  need  affection." 

"Ay,  the  poor  certainly,"  said  Lord  Lilburne,  with  an  air  of 
patronizing  candor.  - 

"And  I  will  own  farther,"  continued  De  Vaudemont,  "that 
I  have  willingly  lost  my  money  in  return  for  the  instruction  I 
have  received  in  hearing  you  converse." 

"You  are  kind  :  come  and  take  your  revenge  next  Thursday. 
Adieu." 

As  Lord  Lilburne  undressed,  and  his  valet  attended  him,  he 
said  to  that  worthy  functionary : 

1 '  So  you  have  not  been  able  to  make  out  the  name  of  the 
stranger — the  new  lodger  you  tell  me  of?  " 

"  No,  my  lord.     They  only  say  he  is  a  very  fine-looking  man." 

"  You  have  not  seen  him  ?  " 

"  No,  my  lord.     What  do  you  wish  me  now  to  do?  " 

"  Humph  !  Nothing  at  this  moment !  You  manage  things  so 
badly,  you  might  get  me  into  a  scrape.  I  never  do  anything 
which  the  law,  or  the  police,  or  even  the  newspapers,  can  get 
hold  of.  I  must  think  of  some  other  way — humph  !  I  never 
give  up  what  I  once  commence,  and  I  never  fail  in  what  I  under- 
take !  If  life  had  been  worth  what  fools  trouble  it  with — busi- 
ness and  ambition — I  suppose  I  should  have  been  a  great  man 


310  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

with  a  very  bad  liver — ha !  ha  !  I,  alone,  of  all  the  world,  ever 
found  out  what  the  world  was  good  for !  Draw  the  curtains, 
Dykeman." 

CHAPTER  VII. 

"  Org.  Welcome  thou  ice  that  sitt'st  about  his  heart ! 
No  heat  can  ever  thaw  thee ! " — FORD  : — Broken  Heart. 

"  Nearch.     Honorable  infamy !  " — Ibid. 

"  Amyc.     Her  tenderness  hath  yet  deserved  no  rigor, 
So  to  be  crossed  by  fate ! 

Arm.     You  misapply,  sir, 
With  favor  let  me  speak,  it  what  Apollo 
Hath  clouded  in  dim  sense !  " — Ibid. 

IF  Vaudement  had  fancied  that,  considering  the  age  and  pov- 
erty of  Simon,  it  was  his  duty  to  see  whether  Fanny's  not  more 
legal,  but  more  natural  protector  were,  indeed,  the  unredeemed 
and  unmalleable  egotist  which  Gawtrey  had  painted  him,  the 
conversation  of  one  night  was  sufficient  to  make  him  abandon 
forever  the  notion  of  advancing  her  claims  upon  Lord  Lilburne. 
But  Philip  had  another  motive  in  continuing  his  acquaintance 
with  that  personage.  The  sight  of  his  mother's  grave  had 
recalled  to  him  the  image  of  that  lost  brother  over  whom  he  had 
vowed  to  watch.  And,  despite  the  deep  sense  of  wronged  affec- 
tion with  which  he  yet  remembered  the  cruel  letter  that  had  con- 
tained the  last  tidings  of  Sidney,  Philip's  heart  clung  with 
undying  fondness  to  that  fair  shape  associated  with  all  the  happy 
recollections  of  childhood  ;  and  his  conscience  as  well  as  his  love 
asked  him,  each  time  that  he  passed  the  churchyard,  '  Will  you 
make  no  effort  to  obey  that  last  prayer  of  the  mother  who  con- 
signed her  darling  to  your  charge?'  Perhaps,  had  Philip  been 
in  want,  or  had  the  name  he  now  bore  been  sullied  by  his  conduct, 
he  might  have  shrunk  from  seeking  one  whom  he  might  injure,  but 
could  not  serve.  But  though  not  rich,  he  had  more  than  enough  for 
tastes  as  hardy  and  simple  as  any  to  which  soldier  of  fortune  ever 
limited  his  desires.  And  he  thought,  with  a  sentiment  of  just  and 
noble  pride,  that  the  name  which  Eugenie  had  forced  upon  him  had 
been  borne  spotless  as  the  ermine  through  the  trials  and  vicissi- 
tudes he  had  passed  since  he  had  assumed  it.  Sidney  could  give 
him  nothing,  and  therefore  it  was  his  duty  to  seek  Sidney  out. 
Now,  he  had  always  believed  in  his  heart  that  the  Beauforts  were 
acquainted  with  a  secret  which  he  more  and  more  pined  to 
penetrate.  He  would,  for  Sidney's  sake,  smother  his  hate  to  the 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  31 1 

Beauforts ;  he  would  not  reject  their  acquaintance  if  thrown 
in  his  way;  nay,  secure  in  his  change  of  name  and  his 
altered  features,  from  all  suspicion  on  their  part,  he  would  seek 
that  acquaintance  in  order  to  find  his  brother  and  fulfil  Cather- 
ine's last  commands.  His  intercourse  with  Lilburne  would  neces- 
sarily bring  him  easily  into  contact  with  Lilburne's  family.  And 
in  this  thought  he  did  not  reject  the  invitations  pressed  on  him. 
He  felt,  too,  a  dark  and  absorbing  interest  in  examining  a  man 
who  was  in  himself  the  incarnation  of  the  World — the  World  of 
Art ;  the  World  as  the  preacher  paints  it ;  the  hollow,  sensual, 
sharp-witted,  self-wrapped  WORLD — the  World  that  is  all  for  this 
life,  and  thinks  of  no  Future  and  no  God ! 

Lord  Lilburne  was,  indeed,  a  study  for  deep  contemplation. 
A  study  to  perplex  the  ordinary  thinker,  and  task  to  the  utmost 
the  analysis  of  more  profound  reflection.  William  Gawtrey  had 
possessed  no  common  talents ;  he  had  discovered  that  his  life  had 
been  one  mistake  ;  Lord  Lilburne's  intellect  was  far  keener  than 
Gawtrey's,  and  he  had  never  made,  and  if  he  had  lived  to  the 
age  of  Old  Parr,  never  would  have  made  a  similar  discovery.  He 
never  wrestled  against  a  law,  though  he  slipped  through  all  laws  ! 
And  he  knew  no  remorse,  for  he  knew  no  fear.  Lord  Lilburne 
had  married  early,  and  long  survived,  a  lady  of  fortune,  the 
daughter  of  the  then  Premier — the  best  match,  in  fact,  of  his  day. 
And  for  one  very  brief  period  of  his  life  he  had  suffered  himself 
to  enter  into  the  field  of  politics,  the  only  ambition  common  with 
men  of  equa'j  rank.  He  showed  talents  that  might  have  raised 
one  so  gifted  by  circumstance  to  any  height,  and  then  retired  at 
once  into  his  old  habits  and  old  system  of  pleasure.  "  I  wished 
to  try,"  said  he  once,  "  if  fame  was  worth  one  headache,  and  I 
have  convinced  myself  that  the  man  who  can  sacrifice  the  bone 
in  his  mouth  to  the  shadow  of  the  bone  in  the  water  is  a  fool." 
From  that  time  he  never  attended  the  House  of  Lords,  and 
declared  himself  of  no  political  opinions  one  way  or  the  other. 
Nevertheless,  the  world  had  a  general  belief  in  his  powers,  and 
Vaudemont  reluctantly  subscribed  to  the  world's  verdict.  Yet  he 
had  done  nothing,  he  had  read  but  little,  he  laughed  at  the  world 
to  its  face  ;  and  that  last  was,  after  all,  the  main  secret  of  his 
ascendancy  over  those  who  were  drawn  into  his  circle.  That 
contempt  of  the  world  placed  the  world  at  his  feet.  His  sar- 
donic and  polished  indifference,  his  professed  code  that  there  was 
no  life  worth  caring  for  but  his  own  life,  his  exemption  from  all 
cant,  prejudice,  and  disguise,  the  frigid  lubricity  with  which  he 
glided  out  of  the  grasp  of  the  Conventional  whenever  it  so 
pleased  him,  without  shocking  the  Decorums  whose  sense  is  in  their 


312 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 


ear,  and  who  are  not  roused  by  the  deed  but  by  the  noise, — all 
this  had  in  it  the  marrow  and  essence  of  a  system  triumphant  with 
the  vulgar ;  for  little  minds  give  importance  to  the  man  who  gives 
importance  to  nothing.  Lord  Lilburne's  authority,  not  in  matters 
of  taste  alone,  but  in  those  which  the  world  calls  judgment  and 
common-sense,  was  regarded  as  an  oracle.  He  cared  not  a  straw 
for  the  ordinary  baubles  that  attract  his  order  ;  he  had  refused 
both  an  earldom  and  the  Garter,  and  this  was  often  quoted  in  his 
honor.  But  you  only  try  a  man's  virtue  when  you  offer  him  some- 
thing that  he  covets.  The  earldom  and  the  Garter  were  to  Lord 
Lilburne  no  more  tempting  inducements  than  a  doll  or  a  skipping- 
rope  ;  had  you  offered  him  an  infallible  cure  for  the  gout,  or  an 
antidote  against  old  age,  you  might  have  hired  him,  as  your 
lackey,  on  your  own  terms.  Lord  Lilburne's  next  heir  was  the 
son  of  his  only  brother,  a  person  entirely  dependent  on  his  uncle. 
Lord  Lilburne  allowed  him  ^1000  a-year,  and  kept  him  always 
abroad  in  a  diplomatic  situation.  He  looked  upon  his  successor 
as  a  man  who  wanted  power,  but  not  inclination,  to  become  his 
assassin. 

Though  he  lived  sumptuously  and  grudged  himself  nothing, 
Lord  Lilburne  was  far  from  an  extravagant  man :  he  might, 
indeed,  be  considered  close ;  for  he  knew  how  much  of  comfort 
and  consideration  he  owed  to  his  money,  and  valued  it  accord- 
ingly ;  he  knew  the  best  speculations  and  the  best  investments. 
If  he  took  shares  in  an  American  canal,  you  might  be  sure  that 
the  shares  would  soon  be  double  in  value ;  if  he  purchased  an 
estate,  you  might  be  certain  it  was  a  bargain.  This  pecuniary 
tact  and  success  necessarily  augmented  his  fame  for  wisdom. 

He  had  been  in  early  life  a  successful  gambler,  and  some  sus- 
picions of  his  fair  play  had  been  noised  abroad  ;  but,  as  has  been 
recently  seen  in  the  instance  of  a  man  of  rank  equal  to  Lilburne's, 
though,  perhaps,  of  less  acute  if  more  cultivated  intellect,  it  is 
long  before  the  pigeon  will  turn  round  upon  a  falcon  of  breed  and 
mettle.  The  rumors,  indeed,  were  so  vague  as  to  carry  with  them 
no  weight.  During  the  middle  of  his  career,  when  in  the  full 
flush  of  health  and  fortune,  he  had  renounced  the  gaming-table. 
Of  late  years,  as  advancing  age  made  time  more  heavy,  he  had 
resumed  the  resource,  and  with  all  his  former  good  luck.  The 
money-market,  the  table,  the  sex,  constituted  the  other  occupa- 
tions and  amusements  with  which  Lord  Lilburne  filled  up  his  rosy 
leisure. 

Another  way  by  which  this  man  had  acquired  reputation  for 
ability  was  this  :  he  never  pretended  to  any  branch  of  knowledge 
of  which  he  was  ignorant,  any  more  than  to  any  virtue  in  which 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  313 

he  was  deficient.  Honesty  itself  was  never  more  free  from 
quackery  or  deception  than  was  this  embodied  and  walking  VICE. 
If  the  world  choose  to  esteem  him,  he  did  not  buy  its  opinion  by 
imposture.  No  man  ever  saw  Lord  Lilburne's  name  in  a  public 
subscription,  whether  for  a  new  church,  or  a  Bible  Society,  or  a 
distressed  family  ;  no  man  ever  heard  of  his  doing  one  generous, 
benevolent,  or  kindly  action  ;  no  man  was  ever  startled  by  one 
philanthrophic,  pious,  or  amiable  sentiment  from  those  mocking 
lips.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  this,  John  Lord  Lilburne  was  not  only 
esteemed,  but  liked,  by  the  world,  and  set  up  in  the  chair  of  its 
Rhadamanthuses.  In  a  word,  he  seemed  to  Vaudemont,  and  he 
was  so  in  reality,  a  brilliant  example  of  the  might  of  Circumstance 
— an  instance  of  what  may  be  done  in  the  way  of  reputation  and 
influence  by  a  rich,  well-born  man,  to  whom  the  will  a  kingdom 
is.  A  little  of  genius,  and  Lord  Lilburne  would  have  made  his 
vices  notorious  and  his  deficiencies  glaring  ;  a  little  of  heart,  and 
his  habits  would  have  led  him  into  countless  follies  and  discredi- 
table scrapes.  It  was  the  lead  and  the  stone  that  he  carried  about 
him  that  preserved  his  equilibrium,  no  matter  which  way  the  breeze 
blew.  But  all  his  qualities,  positive  or  negative,  would  have 
availed  him  nothing  without  that  position  which  enabled  him  to 
take  his  ease  in  that  inn,  the  world  ;  which  presented,  to  every 
detection  of  his  want  of  intrinsic  nobleness,  the  irreproachable 
respectability  of  a  high  name,  a  splendid  mansion,  and  a  rent-roll 
without  a  flaw.  Vaudemont  drew  comparisons  between  Lilburne 
and  Gawtrey,  and  he  comprehended  at  last,  why  one  was  a  low 
rascal  and  the  other  a  great  man. 

Although  it  was  but  a  few  days  after  their  first  introduction  to 
each  other,  Vaudemont  had  been  twice  to  Lord  Lilburne's,  and 
their  acquaintance  was  already  on  an  easy  footing,  when,  one 
afternoon,  as  the  former  was  riding  through  the  streets  towards 

H ,  he  met  the  peer,  mounted  on  a  stout  cob,  which,  from  its 

symmetrical  strength,  pure  English  breed,  and  exquisite  grooming, 
showed  something  of  those  sporting  tastes  for  which,  in  earlier 
life,  Lord  Lilburne  had  been  noted. 

' '  Why,  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  ' '  what  brings  you  to  this 
part  of  the  town? — curiosity  and  the  desire  to  explore?  " 

"That  might  be  natural  enough  in  me;  but  you,  who  know 
London  so  well,  rather  what  brings  jw/  here?  " 

"  Why  I  am  returned  from  a  long  ride.  I  have  had  symptoms 
of  a  fit  of  the  gout,  and  been  trying  to  keep  it  off  by  exercise.  I 
have  been  to  a  cottage  that  belongs  to  me,  some  miles  from  town 
~-a  pretty  place  enough  by  the  way — you  must  come  and  see  me 


314  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

there  next  month.     I  shall  fill  the  house  for  a  battue  !     I  have 
some  tolerable  covers.     You  are  a  good  shot,  I  suppose  ?  ' ' 

"  I  have  not  practised,  except  with  a  rifle,  for  some  years." 

"  That's  a  pity  ;  for  as  I  think  a  week's  shooting  once  a-year 
quite  enough,  I  fear  that  your  visit  to  me  at  Fernside  may  not  be 
sufficiently  long  to  put  your  hand  in." 

"Fernside  !  " 

"  Yes  ;  is  the  name  familiar  to  you  ?  " 

"  I  think  I  have  heard  it  before.  Did  your  lordship  purchase 
or  inherit  it?" 

"  I  bought  it  of  my  brother-in-law.  It  belonged  to  his  brother 
— a  gay,  wild  sort  of  fellow,  who  broke  his  neck  over  a  six-barred 
gate ;  through  that  gate  my  friend  Robert  walked  the  same  day 
into  a  very  fine  estate  ?  " 

"  I  have  heard  so.  The  late  Mr.  Beaufort,  then,  left  no  chil- 
dren?" 

"Yes;  two.     But  they  came  into  the  world  in  the  primitive 
way  in  which  Mr.  Owen  wishes  us  all  to  come — too  naturally  for 
the  present  state  of  society,  and  Mr.  Owen's  parallelogram  was 
not  ready  for  them.     By  the  way,   one  of  them  disappeared  at 
Paris ;  you  never  met  with  him.     I  suppose  ?  " 
'  Under  what  name?  " 
Morton." 

Morton! — hem!     What  Christian  name ?" 
'  Philip." 

'  Philip ! — no.  But  did  Mr.  Beaufort  do  nothing  for  the 
young  men?  I  think  I  have  heard  somewhere  that  he  took  com- 
passion on  one  of  them." 

"  Have  you?  Ah,  my  brother-in-law  is  precisely  one  of  those 
excellent  men  of  whom  the  world  always  speaks  well.  No  ;  he 
would  very  willingly  have  served  either  or  both  the  boys,  but  the 
mother  refused  all  his  overtures  and  went  to  law,  I  fancy.  The 
elder  of  these  bastards  turned  out  a  sad  fellow,  and  the  younger, 
I  don't  know  exactly  where  he  is,  but  no  doubt  with  one  of  his 
mother's  relations.  You  seem  to  interest  yourself  in  natural  chil- 
dren, my  dear  Vaudemont  ?  " 

' '  Perhaps  you  have  heard  that  people  have  doubted  if  I  were  a 
natural  son?" 

"  Ah  !  I  understand  now.  But  are  you  going?  I  was  in  hopes 
you  would  have  turned  back  my  way,  and — 

"  You  are  very  good  ;  but  I  have  a  particular  appointment, 
and  I  am  now  too  late.  Good-morning,  Lord  Lilburne." 

Sidney  with  one  of  his  mother's  relations  !  Returned,  per- 
haps, to  the  Mortons  !  How,  had  he  never  before  chanced  on 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  315 

* 

a  conjecture  so  probable  ?  He  would  go  at  once !  That  very 
night  he  would  go  to  the  house  from  which  he  had  taken  his 
brother.  At  least,  and  at  the  worst,  they  might  give  him  some 
clue. 

Buoyed  with  this  hope  and  this  resolve,  he  rode  hastily  to 

H ,  to  announce  to  Simon  and  Fanny  that  he  should  not 

return  to  them,  perhaps,  for  two  or  three  days.  As  he  entered 
the  suburb,  he  drew  up  by  the  statuary  of  whom  he  had  pur- 
chased his  mother's  grave-stone. 

The  artist  of  the  melancholy  trade  was  at  work  in  his  yard. 

"  Ho  !  there  ! "  said  Vaudemont,  looking  over  the  low  railing  ; 
"  is  the  tomb  I  have  ordered  nearly  finished  ?  " 

"Why,  sir,  as  you  were  so  anxious  for  despatch,  and  as  it 
would  take  a  long  time  to  get  a  new  one  ready,  I  thought  of  giv- 
ing you  this,  which  is  finished  all  but  the  inscription.  It  was 
meant  for  Miss  Deborah  Prirr.me ;  but  her  nephew  and  heir  called 
on  me  yesterday  to  say,  that  as  the  poor  lady  died  worth  less  by 
£5000  than  he  had  expected,  he  thought  a  handsome  wooden 
tomb  would  do  as  well,  if  I  could  get  rid  of  this  for  him.  It  is  a 
beauty,  sir.  It  will  look  so  cheerful — " 

"Well,  that  will  do:  and  you  can  place  it  now  where  I  told 
you." 

"In  three  days,  sir." 

"So  be  it."  And  he  rode  on,  muttering,  "Fanny,  your  pious 
wish  will  be  fulfilled.  But  flowers, — will  they  suit  that  stone?  " 

He  put  up  his  horse,  and  walked  through  the  lane  to  Simon's. 

As  he  approached  the  house,  he  saw  Fanny's  bright  eyes  at  the 
window.  She  was  watching  his  return.  She  hastened  to  open 
the  door  to  him,  and  the  world's  wanderer  felt  what  music  there 
is  in  the  footstep,  what  summer  there  is  in  the  smile,  of  Wel- 
come > 

"My  dear  Fanny,"  he  said,  affected  by  her  joyous  greeting, 
"  it  makes  my  heart  warm  to  see  you.  I  have  brought  you  a 
present  from  town.  When  I  was  a  boy,  I  remember  that  my  poor 
mother  was  fond  of  singing  some  simple  songs,  which  often, 
somehow  or  other,  come  back  to  me,  when  I  see  and  hear  you.  I 
fancy  you  would  understand  and  like  them  as  well  at  least  as  I  do 
— for  Heaven  knows  (he  added  to  himself)  my  ear  is  dull  enough 
generally  to  the  jingle  of  rhyme."  And  he  placed  in  her  hands 
a  little  volume  of  those  exquisite  songs  in  which  Burns  has  set 
Nature  to  music. 

"  Oh !  you  are  so  kind,  brother,"  said  Fanny,  with  tears  swim- 
ming in  her  eyes,  and  she  kissed  the  book. 

After  their  simple  meal,  Vaudemont  broke  to  Fanny  and  Simon 


31 6  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

the  intelligence  of  his  intended  departure  for  a  few  days.  Simon 
heard  it  with  the  silent  apathy  into  which,  except  on  rare  occa- 
sions, his  life  had  settled.  But  Fanny  turned  away  her  face  and 
wept. 

"  It  is  but  for  a  day  or  two,  Fanny." 

"  An  hour  is  very,  very  long  sometimes,"  said  the  girl,  shaking 
her  head  mournfully. 

"  Come,  I  have  a  little  time  yet  left,  and  the  air  is  mild,  you 
have  not  been  out  to-day,  shall  we  walk — " 

"Hem  !  "  interrupted  Simon,  clearing  his  throat,  and  seeming 
to  start  into  sudden  animation;  "had  not  you  better  settle  the 
board  and  lodging  before  you  go?  " 

"Oh,  grandfather  !  "  cried  Fanny,  springing  to  her  feet,  with 
such  a  blush  upon  her  face. 

"Nay,  child,"  said  Vaudemont,  laughingly;  "your  grand- 
father only  anticipates  me.  But  do  not  talk  of  board  and  lodg- 
ing ;  Fanny  is  as  a  sister  to  me,  and  our  purse  is  in  common." 

"I  should  like  to  feel  a  sovereign — just  to  feel  it,"  muttered 
Simon,  in  a  sort  of  apologetic  tone,  that  was  really  pathetic ;  and 
as  Vaudemont  scattered  some  coins  on  the  table,  the  old  man 
clawed  them  up,  chuckling  and  talking  to  himself;  and,  rising 
with  great  alacrity,  hobbled  out  of  the  room  like  a  raven  carry- 
ing some  cunning  theft  to  his  hiding  place. 

This  was  so  amusing  to  Vaudemont  that  he  burst  out  fairly  into 
an  incontrollable  laughter.  Fanny  looked  at  him,  humbled  and 
wondering,  for  some  moments;  and  then,  creeping  to  him,  put 
her  hand  gently  on  his  arm  and  said : 

"Don't  laugh — it  pains  me.  It  was  not  nice  in  grandpapa; 
but — but,  it  does  not  mean  anything.  It — it — don't  laugh — 
Fanny  feels  so  sad  ! " 

"  Well,  you  are  right.  Come,  put  on  your  bonnet,  we  will  go 
out." 

Fanny  obeyed ;  but  with  less  ready  delight  than  usual.  And 
they  took  their  way  through  lanes  over  which  hung,  still  in  the 
cool  air,  the  leaves  of  the  yellow  autumn. 

Fanny  was  the  first  to  break  silence. 

"Do  you  know,"  she  said,  timidly,  "that  people  here  think 
me  very  silly  ?  Do  you  think  so,  too  ?  " 

Vaudemont  was  startled  by  the  simplicity  of  the  question,  and 
hesitated.  Fanny  looked  up  in  his  dark  face  anxiously  and 
inquiringly. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "you  don't  answer?  " 

"  My  dear  Fanny,  there  are  some  things  in  which  I  could  wish 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  317 

you  less  childlike  and,  perhaps,  less  charming.     Those  strange 
snatches  of  song,  for  instance — " 

"What!  do  you  not  like  me  to  sing?    It  is  my  way  of  talking." 

' '  Yes ;  sing,  pretty  one !  But  sing  something  that  we  can 
understand, — sing  the  songs  I  have  given  you,  if  you  will.  And 
now,  may  I  ask  why  you  put  to  me  that  question?" 

"I  have  forgotten,"  said  Fanny,  absently,  and  looking  down. 

Now,  at  that  instant/  as  Philip  Vaudemont  bent  over  the 
exceeding  sweetness  of  that  young  face,  a  sudden  thrill  shot 
through  his  heart,  and  he,  too,  became  silent,  and  lost  in  thought. 
Was  it  possible  that  there  could  creep  into  his  breast  a  wilder 
affection  for  this  creature  than  that  of  tenderness  and  pity  ?  He 
was  startled  as  the  idea  crossed  him.  He  shrunk  from  it  as  a 
profanation — as  a  crime — as  a  frenzy.  He  with  his  fate  so 
uncertain  and  chequered — he  to  link  himself  with  one  so  help- 
less— he  to  debase  the  very  poetry  that  clung  to  the  mental  tem- 
perament of  this  pure  being,  with  the  feelings  which  every  fair 
face  may  awaken  to  every  coarse  heart — to  love  Fanny  !  No,  it 
was  impossible  !  For  what  could  he  love  in  her  but  beauty, 
which  the  very  spirit  had  forgotten  to  guard?  And  she — could 
she  even  know  what  love  was  ?  He  despised  himself  for  even 
admitting  such  a  thought ;  and  with  that  iron  and  hardy  vigor 
which  belonged  to  his  mind,  resolved  to  watch  closely  against 
every  fancy  that  would  pass  the  fairy  boundary  which  separated 
Fanny  from  the  world  of  women. 

He  was  roused  from  this  self-commune  by  an  abrupt  exclama- 
tion from  his  companion. 

"Oh  !  I  recollect  now,  why  I  asked  you  that  question.  There 
is  one  thing  that  always  puzzles  me — I  want  you  to  explain  it. 
Why  does  everything  in  life  depend  upon  money  ?  You  see  even 
my  poor  grandfather  forgot  how  good  you  are  to  us  both,  when — 
when — Ah  !  I  don't  understand — it  pains — it  puzzles  me  !  " 

"  Fanny,  look  there — no,  to  the  left — you  see  that  old  woman, 
in  rags,  crawling  wearily  along :  turn  now  to  the  right — you  see 
that  fine  house  glancing  through  the  trees,  with  a  carriage-and- 
four  at  the  gates?  The  difference  between  that  old  woman  and 
the  owner  of  that  house  is — Money ;  and  who  shall  blame  your 
grandfather  for  liking  Money?" 

Fanny  understood;  and  while  the  wise  man  thus  moralized, 
the  girl,  whom  his  very  compassion  so  haughtily  contemned, 
moved  away  to  the  old  woman  to  do  her  little  best  to  smooth 
down  those  disparities  from  which  wisdom  and  moralizing  never 
deduct  a  grain  !  Vaudemont  felt  this  as  he  saw  her  glide  towards 
the  beggar ;  but  when  she  came  bounding  back  to  him,  she  had 


318  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

forgotten  his  dislike  to  her  songs,  and  was  chanting,  in  the  glee 
of  the  heart  that  a  kind  act  had  made  glad,  one  of  her  own 
impromptu  melodies. 

Vaudemont  turned  away.  Poor  Fanny  had  unconsciously 
decided  his  self-conquest:  she  guessed  not  what  passed  within 
him,  but  she  suddenly  recollected  >  rhat  he  had  said  to  her  about 
her  songs,  and  fancied  him  displeased. 

"Ah  !  I  will  never  do  it  again.     Brother,  don't  turn  away!  " 

"  But  we  must  go  home.  Hark!  the  clock  strikes  seven;  I 
have  no  time  to  lose.  And  you  will  promise  me  never  to  stir  out . 
till  I  return?" 

"I  shall  have  no  heart  to  stir  out,"  said  Fanny,  sadly;  and 
then  in  a  more  cheerful  voice,  she  added,  "  And  I  shall  sing  the 
songs  you  like,  before  you  come  back  again  !  " 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

"  Well  did  they  know  that  service  all  by  rote  ; 
*  *  *  * 

Some  singing  loud  as  if  they  had  complained, 
Some  with  their  notes  another  manner  feigned." 

CHAUCER  :    The  Cuckoo  and  the  Nightingale,  modernized  by 
WORDSWORTH. — HORNE'S  Edition. 

AND  once  more,  sweet  Winandermere,  we  are  on  the  banks  of 
thy  happy  lake  !  The  softest  ray  of  the  soft  clear  sun  of  early 
autumn  trembled  on  the  fresh  waters,  and  glanced  through  the 
leaves  of  the  limes  and  willows  that  were  reflected — distinct  as  a 
home  for  the  Naiads — beneath  the  limpid  surface.  You  might 
hear  in  the  bushes  the  young  blackbirds  trilling  their  first  untu- 
tored notes.  And  the  graceful  dragon-fly,  his  wings  glittering  in 
the  translucent  sunshine,  darted  to  and  fro  the  reeds  gathered 
here  and  there  in  the  mimic  bays  that  broke  the  shelving  marge 
of  the  grassy  shore. 

And  by  that  grassy  shore,  and  beneath  those  shadowy  limes, 
sat  the  young  lovers.  It  was  the  very  place  where  Spencer  had 
first  beheld  Camilla.  And  now  they  were  met  to  say  ' '  Fare- 
well !  " 

"Oh,  Camilla!  "  said  he,  with  great  emotion,  and  eyes  that 
swam  in  tears,  "be  firm — be  true.  You  know  how  my  whole 
life  is  wrapped  up  in  your  love.  You  go  amidst  scenes  where  all 
will  tempt  you  to  forget  me.  I  linger  behind  in  those  which  are 
consecrated  by  your  remembrance,  which  will  speak  to  me  every 
hour  of  you.  Camilla,  since  you  do  love  me — you  do,  do  you 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  319 

not  ?  Since  you  have  confessed  it — since  your  parents  have  con- 
sented to  our  marriage,  provided  only  that  your  love  last  (for  of 
mine  there  can  be  no  doubt)  for  one  year — one  terrible  year — 
shall  I  not  trust  you  as  truth  itself?  And  yet  how  darkly  I  des- 
pair at  times!  " 

Camilla  innocently  took  the  hands  that,  clasped  together,  were 
raised  to  her,  as  if  in  supplication,  and  pressed  them  kindly  be- 
tween her  own. 

"  Do  not  doubt  me — never  doubt  my  affection.  Has  not  my 
father  consented  ?  Reflect,  it  is  but  a  year's  delay  !  " 

' '  A  year !  Can  you  speak  thus  of  a  year — a  whole  year  ?  Not 
to  see — not  to  hear  you  for  a  whole  year,  except  in  my  dreams  ! 
And  if  at  the  end  your  parents  waver  ?  Your  father — I  distrust 
him  still.  If  this  delay  is  but  meant  to  wean  you  from  me ;  if, 
at  the  end,  there  are  new  excuses  found  ;  if  they  then,  for  some 
cause  or  other  not  now  forseen,  still  refuse  their  assent?  You — 
may  I  not  still  look  to  you  ?  " 

Camilla  sighed  heavily ;  and  turning  her  meek  face  on  her 
lover,  said,  timidly:  "Never  think  that  so  short  a  time  can 
make  me  unfaithful,  and  do  not  suspect  that  my  father  will  break 
his  promise." 

"  But,  if  he  does,  you  will  still  be  mine." 

"  Ah,  Charles,  how  could  you  esteem  me  as  a  wife  if  I  were  to 
tell  you  I  could  forget  1  am  a  daughter?  " 

This  was  said  so  touchingly,  and  with  so  perfect  a  freedom 
from  all  affectation,  that  her  lover  could  only  reply  by  covering 
her  hand  with  his  kisses.  And  it  was  not  till  after  a  pause  that 
he  continued  passionately : 

"  You  do  but  show  me  how  much  deeper  is  my  love  than  yours. 
You  can  never  dream  how  I  love  you.  But  I  do  not  ask  you  to 
love  me  as  well — it  would  be  impossible.  My  life  from  my  earli- 
est childhood  has  been  passed  in  these  solitudes — a  happy  life, 
though  tranquil  and  monotonous,  till  you  suddenly  broke  upon  it. 
You  seemed  to  me  the  living  form  of  the  very  poetry  I  had  wor- 
shiped— so  bright,  so  heavenly — I  loved  you  from  the  very  first 
moment  that  we  met.  I  am  not  like  other  men  of  my  age.  I  have 
no  pursuit,  no  occupation;  nothing  to  abstract  me  from  your 
thought.  And  I  love  you  so  purely,  so  devotedly,  Camilla.  I 
have  never  known  even  a  passing  fancy  for  another.  You  are  the 
first,  the  only,  woman,  it  ever  seemed  to  me  possible  to  love.  You 
are  my  Eve ;  your  presence  my  paradise  !  Think  how  sad  I  shall 
be  when  you  are  gone ;  how  I  shall  visit  every  spot  your  footstep 
has  hallowed ;  how  I  shall  count  every  moment  till  the  year  >s 
past!" 


320  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

While  he  thus  spoke,  he  had  risen  in  that  restless  agitation 
which  belongs  to  great  emotion ;  and  Camilla  now  rose  also,  and 
said,  soothingly,  as  she  laid  her  hand  on  his  shoulder  with  tender 
but  modest  frankness :  ' '  And  shall  I  not  also  think  of  you  ?  I 
am  sad  to  feel  that  you  will  be  so  much  alone — no  sister,  no 
brother  !  " 

' '  Do  not  grieve  for  that.  The  memory  of  you  will  be  dearer  to 
me  than  comfort  from  all  else.  And  you  a//// be  true  !  " 

Camilla  made  no  answer  by  words,  but  her  eyes  and  her  color 
spoke.  And  in  that  moment,  while  plighting  eternal  truth,  they 
forgot  that  they  were  about  to  part ! 

Meanwhile,  in  a  room  in  the  house  which,  screened  by  the 
foliage,  was  only  partially  visible  where  the  lovers  stood,  sat  Mr. 
Robert  Beaufort  and  Mr.  Spencer. 

"  I  assure  you,  sir,"  said  the  former,  "that  I  am  not  insensi- 
ble to  the  merits  of  your  nephew,  and  to  the  very  handsome  pro- 
posals you  make ;  still  I  cannot  consent  to  abridge  the  time  I  have 
named.  They  are  both  very  young.  What  is  a  year  ?" 

"It  is  a  long  time  when  it  is  a  year  of  suspense,"  said  the 
recluse,  shaking  his  head. 

"It  is  a  longer  time  when  it  is  a  year  of  domestic  dissension 
and  repentance.  And  it  a  very  true  proverb,  '  Marry  in  haste 
and  repent  at  leisure.'  No!  If  at  the  end  of  the  year  the  young 
people  continue  of  the  same  mind,  and  no  unforeseen  circumstan- 
ces occur — " 

"No  unforeseen  circumstances,  Mr.  Beaufort!  That  is  anew 
condition — it  is  a  very  vague  phrase." 

"  My  dear  sir,  it  is  hard  to  please  you.  Unforeseen  circum- 
stances," said  the  wary  father,  with  a  wise  look,  "  means  circum- 
stances that  we  don't  foresee  at  present.  I  assure  you  that  I  have 
no  intention  to  trifle  with  you,  and  I  shall  be  sincerely  happy  in 
so  respectable  a  connection." 

' '  The  young  people  may  write  to  each  other  ?  ' ' 

"  Why,  I'll  consult  Mrs.  Beaufort.  At  all  events,  it  must  not 
be  very  often,  and  Camilla  is  well  brought  up  and  will  show  all 
the  letters  to  her  mother.  I  don't  much  like  a  correspondence  of 
that  nature.  It  often  leads  to  unpleasant  results;  if,  for  in- 
stance— .' ' 

"If  what?" 

"  Why,  if  the  parties  change  their  minds,  and  my  girl  were  to 
marry  another.  It  is  not  prudent  in  matters  of  business,  my  dear 
sir,  to  put  down  anything  on  paper  that  can  be  avoided." 

Mr.  Spencer  opened  his  eyes.  "Matters  of  business,  Mr.  Beau- 
fort! " 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  321 

"  Well,  is  not  marriage  a  matter  of  business,  and  a  very  grave 
matter  too?  More  lawsuits  about  marriage  and  settlements,  etc., 
than  I  like  to  think  of.  But  to  change  the  subject.  You  have 
never  heard  anything  more  of  these  young  men,  you  say  ?  " 

"No."  said  Mr.  Spencer,  rather  inaudibly,  and  looking  down. 

"And  it  is  your  firm  impression  that  the  elder  one,  Philip,  is 
dead?" 

"I  don't  doubt  it." 

"  That  was  a  very  vexatious  and  improper  lawsuit  their  mother 
brought  against  me.  Do  you  know  that  some  wretched  impostor, 
who,  it  appears,  is  a  convict  broke  loose  before  his  time,  has 
threatened  me  with  another,  on  the  part  of  one  of  those  young 
men.  You  never  heard  anything  of  it — eh  ?  " 

' '  Never,  upon  my  honor. ' ' 

"  And,  of  course,  you  would  not  countenance  so  villainous  an 
attempt?" 

"Certainly  not." 

' '  Because  that  would  break  off  our  contract  at  once.  But  you 
are  too  much  a  gentleman  and  a  man  of  honor.  Forgive  me  so 
improper  a  question.  As  for  the  younger  Mr.  Morton,  I  have  no 
ill-feeling  against  him.  But  the  elder !  Oh,  a  thorough  repro- 
bate !  A  very  alarming  character  !  I  could  have  nothing  to  do 
with  any  member  of  the  family  while  the  elder  lived ;  it  would 
only  expose  me  to  every  species  of  insult  and  imposition.  And 
now  I  think  we  have  left  our  young  friends  alone  long  enough." 

"  But  stay,  to  prevent  future  misunderstanding,  I  may  as  well 
read  over  again  the  heads  of  the  arrangement  you  honor  me  by 
proposing.  You  agree  to  settle  your  fortune  after  your  decease, 
amounting  to  ^23,000  and  your  house,  with  twenty-five  acres, 
one  rood,  and  two  poles,  more  or  less,  upon  your  nephew  and  my 
daughter,  jointly — remainder  to  their  children.  Certainly,  without 
offence  in  a  worldly  point  of  view,  Camilla  might  do  better;  still,  you 
are  so  very  respectable,  and  you  speak  so  handsomely,  that  I  can- 
not touch  upon  that  point ;  and  I  own,  that  though  there  is  a 
large  nominal  rent-roll  attached  to  Beaufort  Court  (indeed  there 
is  not  a  finer  property  in  the  county),  yet  there  are  many  incum- 
brances,  and  ready  money  would  not  be  convenient  to  me. 
Arthur, — poor  fellow,  a  very  fine  young  man,  sir, — is,  as  I  have 
told  you  in  perfect  confidence,  a  little  imprudent  and  lavish ;  in 
short,  your  offer  to  dispense  with  any  dowry  is  extremely  liberal, 
and  proves  your  nephew  is  actuated  by  no  mercenary  feelings : 
such  conduct  prepossesses  me  highly  in  your  favor  and  his  too." 

Mr.  Spencer  bowed,  and  the  great  man  rising,  with  a  stiff 
affectation  of  kindly  affability,  put  his  arm  into  the  uncle's,  and 

21 


322  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

strolled  with  him  across  the  lawn  towards  the  lovers.  And  such 
is  life — love  on  the  lawn  and  settlements  in  the  parlor ! 

The  lover  was  the  first  to  perceive  the  approach  of  the  elder 
parties.  And  a  change  came  over  his  face  as  he  saw  the  dry 
aspect,  and  marked  the  stealthy  stride,  of  his  future  father-in-law ; 
for,  then,  there  flashed  across  him  a  dreary  reminiscence  of  early 
childhood  ;  the  happy  evening  when,  with  his  joyous  father,  that 
grave  and  ominous  aspect  was  first  beheld  ;  and  then  the  dismal 
burial,  the  funereal  sables,  the  carriage  at  the  door,  and  he  him- 
self clinging  to  the  cold  uncle  to  ask  him  to  say  a  word  of  com- 
fort to  the  mother  who  now  slept  far  away. 

"Well,  my  young  friend,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort, patronizingly, 
"  your  good  uncle  and  myself  are  quite  agreed — a  little  time  for  re- 
flection, that's  all.  Oh  !  I  don't  think  the  worse  of  you  for  wishing 
to  abridge  it.  But  papas  must  be  papas." 

There  was  so  little  jocular  about  that  sedate  man,  that  this 
attempt  at  jovial  good  humor  seemed  harsh  and  grating ;  the 
hinges  of  that  wily  mouth  wanted  oil  for  a  hearty  smile. 

"  Come,  don't  be  faint-hearted,  Mr.  Charles.  '  Faint  heart,' 
— you  know  the  proverb.  You  must  stay  and  dine  with  us.  We 
return  to-morrow  to  town.  I  should  tell  you,  that  I  received  this 
morning  a  letter  from  my  son  Arthur,  announcing  his  return  from 
Baden,  so  we  must  give  him  the  meeting — a  very  joyful  one  you 
may  guess.  We  have  not  seen  him  these  three  years.  Poor  fel- 
low !  he  says  he  has  been  very  ill,  and  the  waters  have  ceased  to 
do  him  any  good.  But  a  little  quiet  and  country  air  at  Beaufort 
Court  will  set  him  up,  I  hope." 

Thus  running  on  about  his  son,  then  about  his  shooting  ;  about 
Beaufort  Court  and  its  splendors;  about  Parliament  and  its  fatig- 
ues ;  about  the  last  French  Revolution,  and  the  last  English  elec- 
tion ;  about  Mrs.  Beaufort,  and  her  good  qualities  and  bad  health ; 
about,  in  short,  everything  relating  to  himself,  some  things  relat- 
ing to  the  public,  and  nothing  that  related  to  the  persons  to 
whom  his  conversation  was  directed,  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  wore 
away  half  an  hour,  when  the  Spencers  took  their  leave,  prom- 
ising to  return  to  dinner. 

"Charles,"  said  Mr.  Spencer,  as  the  boat,  which  the  young 
man  rowed,  bounded  over  the  water  towards  their  quiet  home ; 
"Charles,  I  dislike  these  Beauforts  !  " 

"Not  the  daughter?" 

"  No,  she  is  beautiful,  and  seems  good:  not  so  handsome  as 
your  poor  mother,  but  who  ever  was?  "  Here  Mr.  Spencer  sighed, 
and  repeated  some  lines  from  Shenstone. 

"Pp  you  think  Mr.  Beaufort  suspects  in  the  least  who  I  am  !  '* 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  323 

"  Why,  that  puzzles  me ;  I  rather  think  he  does." 

"  And  that  is  the  cause  of  the  delay  ?     I  knew  it." 

"No,  on  the  contrary,  I  incline  to  think  he  has  some  kindly 
feeling  to  you,  though  not  to  your  brother,  and  that  it  is  such  a 
feeling  that  made  him  consent  to  your  marriage.  He  sifted  me 
very  closely  as  to  what  I  knew  of  the  young  Morton ;  observed  that 
you  were  very  handsome,  and  that  he  had  fancied  at  first  that  he 
had  seen  you  before." 

"Indeed  !  " 

"  Yes:  and  looked  hard  at  me  while  he  spoke ;  and  said  more 
than  once,  significantly,  'So  his  name  is  Charles?'  He  talked 
about  some  attempt  at  imposture  and  litigation,  but  that  was  evi- 
dently, merely  invented  to  sound  me  about  your  brother — whom, 
of  course,  he  spoke  ill  of — impressing  on  me,  three  or  four  times, 
that  he  would  never  have  anything  to  say  to  any  of  the  family 
while  Philip  lived." 

"  And  you  told  him,"  said  the  young  man,  hesitatingly,  and 
with  a  deep  blush  of  shame  over  his  face,  "  that  you  were  persuad 
— that  is,  that  you  believed  Philip  was — was — " 

"Was dead!  Yes:  and  without  confusion.  For  the  more  I 
reflect,  the  more  I  think  he  must  be  dead.  At  all  events,  you  may 
be  sure  that  he  is  dead  to  us,  that  we  shall  never  hear  more  of 
him." 

"Poor  Philip!" 

1 '  Your  feelings  are  natural ;  they  are  worthy  of  your  excellent 
heart ;  but  remember,  what  would  have  become  of  you  if  you 
had  stayed  with  him  !  " 

"True  !  "  said  the  brother,  with  a  slight  shudder;  "a  career 
of  suffering — crime — perhaps,  the  gibbet  !  Ah  !  what  do  I  owe 
you?" 

The  dinner-party  at  Mr.  Beaufort's  that  day  was  constrained 
and  formal,  though  the  host,  in  unusual  good-humor,  sought  to 
make  himself  agreeable.  Mrs.  Beaufort,  languid  and  afflicted 
with  headache,  said  little.  The  two  Spencers  were  yet  more  silent. 
But  the  younger  sat  next  to  her  he  loved  ;  and  both  hearts  were 
full :  and  in  the  evening,  they  contrived  to  creep  apart  into  a  cor- 
ner by  the  window,  through  which  the  starry  heavens  looked 
kindly  on  them.  They  conversed  in  whispers,  with  long  pauses 
between  each  :  and  at  times,  Camilla's  tears  flowed  silently  down 
her  cheeks,  and  were  followed  by  the  false  smiles  intended  to 
cheer  her  lover. 

Time  did  not  fly,  but  crept  on  breathlessly  and  heavily.  And 
then  came  the  last  parting — formal,  cold,  before  witnesses,  But 


324  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

the  lover  could  not  restrain  his  emotion,  and  the  hard  father 
heard  his  suppressed  sob  as  he  closed  the  door. 

It  will  now  be  well  to  explain  the  cause  of  Mr.  Beaufort's 
heightened  spirits,  and  the  motives  of  his  conduct  with  respect  to 
his  daughter's  suitor. 

This,  perhaps,  can  be  best  done,  by  laying  before  the  reader 
the  following  letters  that  passed  between  Mr.  Beaufort  and  Lord 
Lilburne. 

From  LORD  LILBURNE  to  ROBERT  BEAUFORT,  ESQ.  ,  M.  P. 

"  DEAR  BEAUFORT, — I  think  I  have  settled,  pretty  satisfactorily, 
your  affair  with  your  unwelcome  visitor.  The  first  thing  it 
seemed  to  me  necessary  to  do,  was  to  learn  exactly  what  and 
who  he  was,  and  with  what  parties  that  could  annoy  you  he 
held  intercourse.  I  sent  for  Sharp,  the  Bowstreet  officer,  and 
placed  him  in  the  hall  to  mark,  and  afterwards  to  dog  and  keep 
watch  on  your  new  friend.  The  moment  the  latter  entered,  I  saw 
at  once,  from  his  dress  and  his  address,  that  he  was  a  '  scamp  ', 
and  thought  it  highly  inexpedient  to  place  you  in  his  power  by  any 
money  transactions.  While  talking  with  him,  Sharp  sent  in  a 
billet  containing  his  recognition  of  our  gentleman  as  a  transported 
convict. 

"  I  acted  accordingly ;  soon  saw,  from  the  fellow's  manner, 
that  he  had  returned  before  his  time ;  and  sent  him  away  with  a 
promise,  which  you  may  be  sure  he  believes  will  be  kept,  that  if 
he  molest  you  farther,  he  shall  return  to  the  colonies,  and  that  if 
his  lawsuit  proceed,  his  witness  or  witnesses  shall  be  indicted  for 
conspiracy  and  perjury.  Make  your  mind  easy  so  far.  For  the 
rest,  I  own  to  you  that  I  think  what  he  says  probable  enough  :  but 
my  object  in  setting  Sharp  to  watch  him  is  to  learn  what  other 
parties  he  sees.  And  if  there  be  really  anything  formidable  in 
his  proofs  or  witnesses,  it  is  with  those  other  parties  I  advise  you 
to  deal.  Never  transact  business  with  the  go-between,  if  you  can 
with  the  principal.  Remember,  the  two  young  men  are  the  per- 
sons to  arrange  with  after  all.  They  must  be  poor,  and  therefore 
easily  dealt  with.  For  if  poor,  they  will  think  a  bird  in  the  hand 
worth  two  in  the  bush  of  a  lawsuit. 

"  If,  through  Mr.  Spencer,  you  can  learn  anything  of  either 
of  the  young  men,  do  so;  and  try  and  open  some  channel, 
through  which  you  can  always  establish  a  communication  with 
them,  if  necessary.  Perhaps,  by  learning  their  early  history, 
you  may  learn  something  to  put  them  into  your  power, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  325 

"  I  have  had  a  twinge  of  the  gout  this  morning  ;  and  am  likely, 
I  fear,  to  be  laid  up  for  some  weeks. 

"Yours  truly, 

' '  LlLBURNE. 

"P.S. — Sharp  has  just  been  here.  He  followed  the  man  who 
calls  himself  '  Captain  Smith  '  to  a  house  in  Lambeth,  where  he 
lodges,  and  from  which  he  did  not  stir  till  midnight,  when  Sharp 
ceased  his  watch.  On  renewing  it  this  morning,  he  found  that 
the  captain  had  gone  off,  to  what  place  Sharp  has  not  yet  discov- 
ered. 

"  Burn  this  immediately." 

From  ROBERT  BEAUFORT,  ESQ.,  M.  P.,  to  the  LORD  LILBURNE. 

"  DEAR  LILBURNE, — Accept  my  warmest  thanks  for  your  kind- 
ness ;  you  have  done  admirably,  and  I  do  not  see  that  I  have 
anything  further  to  apprehend.  I  suspect  that  it  was  an  entire 
fabrication  on  that  man's  part,  and  your  firmness  has  foiled  his 
wicked  designs.  Only  think,  I  have  discovered — I  am  sure  of  it 
— one  of  the  Mortons ;  and  he,  too,  though  the  younger,  yet,  in 
all  probability,  the  sole  pretender  the  fellow  could  set  up.  You 
remember  that  the  child  Sidney  had  disappeared  mysteriously ; 
you  remember  also,  how  much  that  Mr.  Spencer  had  interested 
himself  in  finding  out  the  same  Sidney.  Well,  this  gentleman  at 
the  Lakes  is,  as  we  suspected,  the  identical  Mr.  Spencer,  and  his 
soi-disant  nephew,  Camilla's  suitor,  is  assuredly  no  other  than 
the  lost  Sidney.  The  moment  I  saw  the  young  man  I  recognized 
him,  for  he  is  very  little  altered,  and  has  a  great  look  of  his 
mother  in  the  bargain.  Concealing  my  more  than  suspicions,  I, 
however,  took  care  to  sound  Mr.  Spencer  (a  very  poor  soul),  and 
his  manner  was  so  embarrassed  as  to  leave  no  doubt  of  the  mat- 
ter; but  in  asking  him  what  he  had  heard  of  the  brothers,  I  had 
the  satisfaction  of  learning  that,  in  all  human  probability,  the 
elder  is  dead  :  of  this  Mr.  Spencer  seems  convinced.  I  also 
assured  myself  that  neither  Spencer  nor  the  young  man  had  the 
remotest  connection  with  our  Captain  Smith,  nor  any  idea  of 
litigation.  This  is  very  satisfactory,  you  will  allow.  And  now, 
I  hope  you  will  approve  of  what  I  have  done.  I  find  that  young 
Morton,  or  Spencer,  as  he  is  called,  is  desperately  enamoured  of 
Camilla;  he  seems  a  meek,  well-conditioned,  amiable,  young 
man,  writes  poetry;  in  short,  rather  weak  than  otherwise.  I 
have  demanded  a  year's  delay,  to  allow  mutual  trial  and  reflec- 
tion. This  gives  us  the  channel  for  constant  information  which 
you  advise  me  to  establish,  and  I  shall  have  the  opportunity  to 


326  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

learn  if  the  impostor  makes  any  communication  to  them,  or  if 
there  be  any  news  of  the  brother.  If  by  any  trick  or  chicanery 
(for  I  will  never  believe  that  there  was  a  marriage)  a  law-suit  that 
might  be  critical  or  hazardous  can  be  cooked  up,  I  can,  I  am 
sure,  make  such  terms  with  Sidney,  through  his  love  for  my 
daughter,  as  would  effectively  and  permanently  secure  me  from 
all  further  trouble  and  machinations  in  regard  to  my  property. 
And  if,  during  the  year,  we  convince  ourselves  that,  after  all, 
there  is  not  a  leg  of  law  for  any  claimant  to  stand  on,  I  may  be 
guided  by  other  circumstances  how  far  I  shall  finally  accept  or 
reject  the  suit.  That  must  depend  on  any  other  views  we  may 
then  form  for  Camilla ;  and  I  shall  not  allow  a  hint  of  such  an 
engagement  to  gel  abroad.  At  the  worst,  as  Mr.  Spencer's  heir, 
it  is  not  so  very  bad  a  match,  seeing  that  they  dispense  with 
all  marriage-portion,  etc. — a  proof  how  easily  they  can  be  man- 
aged. I  have  not  let  Mr.  Spencer  see  that  I  have  discovered  his 
secret ;  I  can  do  that  or  not,  according  to  circumstances  here- 
after, neither  have  I  said  anything  of  my  discovery  to  Mrs.  B.  or 
Camilla.  At  present,  'least  said,  soonest  mended.'  I  heard 
from  Arthur  to-day.  He  is  on  his  road  home,  and  we  hasten  to 
town,  sooner  than  we  expected,  to  meet  him.  He  complains  still 
of  his  health.  We  shall  all  go  down  to  Beaufort  Court.  I  write 
this  at  night,  the  pretended  uncle  and  sham  nephew  having  just 
gone.  But  though  we  start  to-morrow,  you  will  get  this  a  day  or 
two  before  we  arrive,  as  Mrs.  Beaufort's  health  renders  short 
stages  necessary.  I  really  do  hope  that  Arthur,  also,  will  not  be 
an  invalid,  poor  fellow  !  one  in  a  family  is  quite  enough ;  and  I 
find  Mrs.  Beaufort's  delicacy  very  inconvenient,  especially  in 
moving  about  and  in  keeping  up  one's  county  connections.  A 
young  man's  health,  however,  is  soon  restored.  I  am  very  sorry 
to  hear  of  your  gout,  except  that  it  carries  off  all  other  com- 
plaints. I  am  very  well,  thank  Heaven ;  indeed,  my  health  has 
been  much  better  of  late  years:  Beaufort  Court  agrees  with  me 
so  well !  The  more  I  reflect,  the  more  I  am  astonished  at  the 
monstrous  and  wicked  impudence  of  that  fellow — to  defraud  a 
man  out  of  his  own  property  !  You  are  quite  right, — certainly  a 
conspiracy. 

"Yours  truly, 

"R.  B. 

"  P.  S. — I  shall  keep  a  constant  eye  on  the  Spencers. 

"  Burn  this  immediately." 

After  he  had  written  and  sealed  this  letter,  Mr.  Beaufort  went 
to  bed  and  slept  soundly. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  327 

And  the  next  day  that  place  was  desolate,  and  the  board  on 
the  lawn  announced  that  it  was  again  to  be  let.  But  thither 
daily,  in  rain  or  sunshine,  came  the  solitary  lover,  as  a  bird  that 
seeks  its  young  in  the  deserted  nest.  Again  and  again  he  haunted 
the  spot  where  he  had  strayed  with  the  lost  one,  and  again  and 
again  murmured  his  passionate  vows  beneath  the  fast-fading  limes. 
Are  those  vows  destined  to  be  ratified  or  annulled  ?  Will  the 
absent  forget,  or  the  lingerer  be  consoled  ?  Had  the  characters 
of  that  young  romance  been  lightly  stamped  on  the  fancy  where 
once  obliterated  they  are  erased  forever,  or  were  they  graven 
deep  in  those  tablets  where  the  writing,  even  when  invisible, 
exists  still,  and  revives,  sweet  letter  by  letter,  when  the  light  and 
the  warmth  borrowed  from  the  One  Bright  Presence  are  applied 
to  the  faithful  record  ?  There  is  but  one  Wizard  to  disclose  that 
secret,  as  all  others, — the  old  Grave-digger,  whose  Churchyard  is 
the  Earth,  whose  trade  is  to  find  burial-places  for  Passions  that 
seemed  immortal ;  disinterring  the  ashes  of  some  long-crumbling 
Memory,  to  hollow  out  the  dark  bed  of  some  new-perished  Hope ; 
He  who  determines  all  things,  and  prophesies  none, — for  his 
oracles  are  uncomprehended  till  the  doom  is  sealed ;  He  who  in 
the  bloom  of  the  fairest  affection  detects  the  hectic  that  consumes 
it,  and  while  the  hymn  rings  at  the  altar,  marks  with  his  joyless 
eye  the  grave  for  the  bridal  vow.  Wherever  is  the  sepulchre, 
there  is  thy  temple,  O  melancholy  TIME  ! 

BOOK  V. 


CHAPTER  I. 
"Per  ambages  et  ministeria  deorum."  * — PETRONIUS. 

MR.  ROGER  MORTON  was  behind  his  counter  one  drizzling, 
melancholy  day.  Mr.  Roger  Morton,  alderman,  and  twice  mayor 
of  his  native  town,  was  a  thriving  man.  He  had  grown  portly 
and  corpulent.  The  nightly  potations  of  brandy  and  water,  con- 
tinued year  after  year  with  mechanical  perseverance,  had  deepened 
the  roses  on  his  cheek.  Mr.  Roger  Morton  was  never  intoxicated 
— he  "only  made  himself  comfortable."  His  constitution  was 

^  strong;  but,  somehow  or  other,  his  digestion  was  not  as  good  as 
it  might  be.  He  was  certain  that  something  or  other  disagreed 
with  him.  He  left  off  the  joint  one  day,  the  pudding  another. 

*  Through  the  mysteries  and  ministerings  of  the  gods. 


328  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

Now  he  avoided  vegetables  as  poison,  and  now  he  submitted  with 
a  sigh  to  the  doctor's  interdict  of  his  cigar.  Mr.  Roger  Morton 
never  thought  of  leaving  off  the  brandy  and  water  :  and  he  would 
have  resented  as  the  height  of  impertinent  insinuation  any  hint 
upon  that  score  to  a  man  of  so  sober  and  respectable  a  character. 

Mr.  Roger  Morton  was  seated — for  the  last  four  years,  ever 
since  his  second  mayoralty,  he  had  arrogated  to  himself  the  dig- 
nity of  a  chair.  He  received  rather  than  served  his  customers. 
The  latter  task  was  left  to  two  of  his  sons.  For  Tom,  after  much 
cogitation,  the  profession  of  an  apothecary  had  been  selected. 
Mrs.  Morton  observed  that  it  was  a  genteel  business,  and  Tom  had 
always  been  a  likely  lad.  And  Mr.  Roger  considered  that  it  would 
be  a  great  comfort  and  a  great  saving  to  have  his  medical  adviser 
in  his  own  son. 

The  other  two  sons,  and  the  various  attendants  of  the  shop, 
were  plying  the  profitable  trade,  as  customer  after  customer,  with 
umbrellas  and  in  pattens,  dropped  into  the  tempting  shelter,  when  a 
man,  meanly  dressed,  and  who  was  somewhat  past  middle  age,  with 
a  care-worn,  hungry  face,  entered  timidly.  He  waited  in  patience 
by  the  crowded  counter,  elbowed  by  sharp-boned  and  eager  spin- 
sters— and  how  sharp  the  elbows  of  spinsters  are,  no  man  can  tell 
who  has  not  forced  his  unwelcome  way  through  the  agitated  groups 
in  a  linendraper's  shop! — the  man,  I  say,  waited  patiently  and 
sadly,  till  the  smallest  of  the  shop  boys  turned  from  a  lady,  who, 
after  much  sorting  and  shading,  had  finally  decided  on  two  yards 
of  lilac-colored  penny  riband,  and  asked,  in  an  insinuating  pro- 
fessional tone : 

"  What  shall  I  show  you,  sir?  " 

"I  wish  to  speak  to  Mr.  Morton.     Which  is  he?  " 

"Mr.  Morton  is  engaged,  sir.     I  can  give  you  what  you  want." 

"No,  it  is  a  matter  of  business — important  business." 

The  boy  eyed  the  napless  and  dripping  hat,  the  gloveless  hands, 
and  the  rusty  neckcloth  of  the  speaker ;  and  said,  as  he  passed  his 
fingers  through  a  profusion  of  light  curls  : 

"Mr.  Morton  don't  attend  much  to  business  himself  now  ;  but 
that's  he.  Any  cravats,  sir?" 

The  man  made  no  answer,  but  moved  where,  near  the  window, 
and  chatting  with  the  banker  of  the  town  (as  the  banker  tried  on 
a  pair  of  beaver  gloves),  sat  still — after  due  apology  for  sitting- 
Mr.  Roger  Morton. 

The  alderman  lowered  his  spectacles  as  he  glanced  grimly  at 
the  lean  apparition  that  shaded  the  spruce  banker,  and  said : 

"  Do  you  want  me,  friend?" 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  329 

"Yes,  sir,  if  you  please;  "  and  the  man  took  off  his  shabby 
hat,  and  bowed  low. 

"Well,  speak  out.     No  begging  petition,  I  hope?" 

11  No,  sir  !     Your  nephews — ' 

The  banker  turned  round,  and  in  his  turn  eyed  the  new-comer. 
The  linendraper  started  back. 

"Nephews!"  he  repeated,  with  a  bewildered  look.  "What 
does  the  man  mean?  Wait  a  bit." 

"  Oh,  I've  done !  "  said  the  banker,  smiling.  "  I  am  glad  to 
find  we  agree  so  well  upon  this  question  :  I  knew  we  should.  Our 
member  will  never  suit  us  if  he  goes  on  in  this  way.  Trade  must 
take  care  of  itself.  Good-day  to  you  !  " 

"Nephews!  "  repeated  Mr.  Morton,  rising,  and  beckoning  to 
the  man  to  follow  him  into  the  back  parlor,  where  Mrs.  Morton 
sat  casting  up  the  washing  bills. 

"Now,"  said  the  husband,  closing  the  door,  "what  do  you 
mean,  my  good  fellow?" 

"Sir,  what  I  wish  to  ask  you  is — if  you  can  tell  me  what  has 

become  of — of  the  young  Beau ,  — that  is,  of  your  sister's 

sons.  I  understand  there  were  two,  and  I  am  told  that — that 
they  are  both  dead.  Is  it  so?  " 

"  What  is  that  to  you,  friend?" 

"  An  please  you,  sir,  it  is  a  great  deal  to  them  /" 

"  Yes — ha  !  ha  ! — it  is  a  great  deal  to  everybody  whether  they 
are  alive  or  dead  !  "  Mr.  Morton,  since  he  had  been  mayor,  now 
and  then  had  his  joke.  "But  really — " 

"  Roger  !  "  said  Mrs.  Morton,  under  her  breath,  "Roger ! " 

"Yes,  my  dear." 

"Come  this  way;  I  want  to  speak  to  you  about  this  bill." 
The  husband  approached  and  bent  over  his  wife.  "  Who's  this 
man?" 

"1  don't  know." 

"Depend  on  it,  he  has  some  claim  to  make — some  bills,  or 
something.  Don't  commit  yourself;  the  boys  are  dead  for  what 
we  know  !  " 

Mr.  Morton  hemmed,  and  returned  to  his  visitor. 

"To  tell  you  the  truth,  I  am  not  aware  of  what  has  become  of 
the  young  men." 

"Then  they  are  not  dead — I  thought  not !  "  exclaimed  the  man, 
joyously. 

"That's  more  than  I  can  say.  It's  many  years  since  I  lost 
sight  of  the  only  one  I  ever  <=aw ;  and  they  may  be  both  dead  for 
what  I  know." 


330  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"Indeed  !  "  said  the  man.  "  Then  you  can  give  me  no  kind 
of — of — hint-like,  to  find  them  out?" 

"No.     Do  they  owe  you  anything  !  " 

"  It  does  not  signify  talking  now,  sir.     I  beg  your  pardon." 

"  Stay  !     Who  are  you?" 

"I  am  a  very  poor  man,  sir." 

Mr.  Morton  recoiled. 

"  Poor  !  Oh,  very  well — very  well.  You  have  done  with  me 
now.  Good-day — good-day.  I  'm  busy." 

The  stranger  pecked  for  a  moment  at  his  hat,  turned  the  handle 
of  the  door,  peered  under  his  gray  eyebrows  at  the  portly  trader, 
who,  with  both  hands  buried  in  his  pockets,  his  mouth  pursed  up, 
like  a  man  about  to  say  "No,"  fidgeted  uneasily  behind  Mrs. 
Morton's  chair.  He  sighed,  shook  his  head,  and  vanished. 

Mrs.  Morton  rang  the  bell ;  the  maid-servant  entered. 

"  Wipe  the  carpet,  Jenny;  dirty  feet !  Mr.  Morton,  it's  a  Brus- 
sels !  " 

' '  It  was  not  my  fault,  my  dear.  I  could  not  talk  about  family 
matters  before  the  whole  shop.  Do  you  know,  I'd  quite  forgot 
those  poor  boys.  This  unsettles  me.  Poor  Catherine  !  she  was 
so  fond  of  them.  A  pretty  boy  that  Sidney,  too.  What  can 
have  become  of  them?  My  heart  rebukes  me.  I  wish  I  had 
asked  the  man  more." 

"  More !     Why,  he  was  just  going  to  beg." 

"Beg — yes — very  true!"  said  Mr.  Morton,  pausing  irreso- 
lutely; and  then,  with  a  hearty  tone,  he  cried  out,  "And, 
damme,  if  he  had  begged,  I  could  afford  him  a  shilling  !  I'll  go 
after  him."  So  saying,  he  hastened  back  through  the  shop,  but 
the  man  was  gone — the  rain  was  falling — Mr.  Morton  had  his 
thin  shoes  on — he  blew  his  nose,  and  went  back  to  the  counter. 
But,  there,  still  rose  to  his  memory  the  pale  face  of  his  dead 
sister;  and  a  voice  murmured  in  his  ear,  "Brother,  where  is  my 
child?" 

' '  Pshaw !  it  is  not  my  fault  if  he  ran  away.  Bob,  go  and  get 
me  the  county  paper." 

Mr.  Morton  had  again  settled  himself,  and  was  deep  in  a  trial 
for  murder,  when  another  stranger  strode  haughtily  into  the  shop. 
The  newcomer,  \rrapped  in  a  pelisse  of  furs,  with  a  thick  mous- 
tache, and  an  eye  that  took  in  the  whole  shop,  from  master  to 
boy,  from  ceiling  to  floor,  in  a  glance,  had  the  air  at  once  of  a 
foreigner  and  a  soldier.  Every  look  fastened  on  him,  as  he 
paused  an  instant,  and  then  walking  up  to  the  alderman,  said: 

"  Sir.  you  are  doubtless  Mr.  Morton?" 

"At  your  commands,  sir,"  said  Roger,  rising  involuntarily. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  331 

"A  word  with  you,  then,  on  business." 

"  Business  !  "  echoed  Mr.  Morton,  turning  rather  "pale,  for  he 
began  to  think  himself  haunted  ;  "anything  in  my  line,  sir?  I 
should  be — " 

The  stranger  bent  down  his  tall  stature,  and  hissed  into  Mr. 
Morton's  foreboding  ear : 

"  Your  nephews  !  " 

Mr.  Morton  was  literally  dumb-stricken.  Yes,  he  certainly 
was  haunted  !  He  stared  at  this  second  questioner,  and  fancied 
that  there  was  something  very  supernatural  and  unearthly  about 
him.  He  was  so  tall,  and  so  dark,  and  so  stern,  and  so  strange. 
Was  it  the  Unspeakable  himself  come  for  the  linendraper? 
Nephews  again  !  The  uncle  of  the  babes  in  the  wood  could 
hardly  have  been  more  startled  by  the  demand  ! 

"Sir,"  said  Mr.  Morton  at  last,  recovering  his  dignity  and 
somewhat  peevishly,  "  Sir,  I  don't  know  why  people  should  med- 
dle with  my  family  affairs.  I  don't  ask  other  folks  about  their 
nephews.  I  have  no  nephew  that  I  know  of." 

"  Permit  me  to  speak  to  you,  alone,  for  one  instant." 

Mr.  Morton  sighed,  hitched  up  his  trowsers,  and  led  the  way 
to  the  parlor,  where  Mrs.  Morton,  having  finished  the  washing 
bills,  was  now  engaged  in  tying  certain  pieces  of  bladder  round 
certain  pots  of  preserves.  The  eldest  Miss  Morton,  a  young 
woman  of  five  or  six-and-twenty,  who  was  about  to  be  very 
advantageously  married  to  a  young  gentleman  who  dealt  in  coals 

and  played  the  violin  (for  N was  a  very  musical  town),  had 

just  joined  her  for  the  purpose  of  extorting  "  The  Swiss  Boy,  with 
variations,"  out  of  a  sleepy  little  piano,  that  emitted  a  very  pain- 
ful cry  under  the  awakening  fingers  of  Miss  Margaret  Morton. 

Mr.  Morton  threw  open  the  door  with  a  grunt,  and  the  stranger 
pausing  at  the  threshold,  the  full  flood  of  sound  (key  C)  upon 
which  "  the  Swiss  Boy"  was  swimming  along,  "  kine  "  and  all, 
tor  life  and  death,  came  splash  upon  him. 

"  Silence  !  can't  you  ?  "  cried  the  father,  putting  one  hand  to 
his  ear,  while  with  the  other  he  pointed  to  a  chair  ;  and  as  Mrs. 
Morton  looked  up  from  the  preserves  with  that  air  of  indignant 
suffering  with  which  female  meekness  upbraids  a  husband's  wan- 
ton outrage,  Mr.  Roger  added,  shrugging  his  shoulders: 

"My  nephews  again,  Mrs.  M.  !  " 

Miss  Margaret  turned  round,  and  dropped  a  courtesy.  Mrs. 
Morton  gently  let  fall  a  napkin  over  the  preserves,  and  muttered 
a  sort  of  salutation,  as  the  stranger,  taking  off  his  hat,  turned  to 
mother  and  daughter  one  of  those  noble  faces  in  which  Nature 
has  written  her  grant  and  warranty  of  the  lordship  of  creation. 


332  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"  Pardon  me,"  he  said,  "if  I  disturb  you.  But  my  business 
will  be  short.  I  have  come  to  ask  you,  sir,  frankly,  and  as  one 
who  has  a  right  to  ask  it,  what  tidings  you  can  give  me  of  Sidney 
Morton?" 

"  Sir,  I  know  nothing  whatever  about  him.  He  was  taken 
from  my  house,  about  twelve  years  since,  by  his  brother.  My- 
self, and  the  two  Mr.  Beauforts,  and  another  friend  of  the  family, 
went  in  search  of  them  both.  My  search  failed." 

"And  theirsu"' 

' '  I  understood  from  Mr.  Beaufort  that  they  had  not  been  more 
successful.  I  have  had  no  communication  with  those  gentlemen 
since.  But  that's  neither  here  nor  there.  In  all  probability,  the 
elder  of  the  boys, — who,  I  fear,  was  a  sad  character, — corrupted 
and  ruined  his  brother ;  and  by  this  time  Heaven  knows  what 
and  where  they  are." 

"  And  no  one  has  inquired  of  you  since;  no  one  has  asked  the 
brother  of  Catherine  Morton,  nay,  rather  of  Catherine  Beaufort : 
Where  is  the  child  intrusted  to  your  care?" 

This  question,  so  exactly  similar  to  that  which  his  superstition 
had  rung  on  his  own  ears,  perfectly  appalled  the  worthy  alder- 
man. He  staggered  back,  stared  at  the  marked  and  stern  face 
that  lowered  upon  him,  and  at  last  cried  : 

"  For  pity's  sake,  sir,  be  just !  What  could  I  do  for  one  who 
left  me  of  his  own  accord  ? — ' ' 

"  The  day  you  had  beaten  him  like  a  dog.  You  see,  Mr.  Mor- 
ton, I  know  all." 

"And  what  are  you?"  said  Mr.  Morton,  recovering  his  Eng- 
lish courage,  and  feeling  himself  strangely  browbeaten  in  his  own 
house;  "What  and  who  are  you,  that  you  thus  take  the  liberty 
to  catechise  a  man  of  my  character  and  respectability?  " 

"Twice  mayor — "  began  Mrs.  Morton. 

"Hush,  mother!"  whispered  Miss  Margaret,  "don't  work 
him  up." 

"  I  repeat,  sir,  what  are  you?  " 

"What  am  I?  Your  nephew!  Who  ami?  Before  men, 
I  bear  a  name  that  I  have  assumed,  and  not  dishonored ;  before 
Heaven,  I  am  Philip  Beaufort !  " 

Mrs.  Morton  dropped  down  upon  her  stool.  Margaret  mur- 
mured "My  cousin  !  "  in  a  tone  that  the  ear  of  the  musical  coal- 
merchant  might  not  have  greatly  relished.  And  Mr.  Morton, 
after  a  long  pause,  came  up  with  a  frank  and  manly  expression  of 
joy,  and  said  : 

"  Then,  sir,  I  thank  Heaven,  from  my  heart,  that  one  of  my 
sister's  children  stands  alive  before  me  !  " 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  333 

"And  now,  again,  I — I  whom  you  accuse  of  having  corrupted 
and  ruined  him — him  for  whom  I  toiled  and  worked  ;  him,  who 
was  to  me,  then,  as  a  last  surviving  son  to  some  anxious  father — 
I,  from  whom  he  was  reft  and  robbed — I  ask  you  again  for  Sid- 
ney— for  my  brother  !  " 

"And  again,  I  say,  that  I  have  no  information  to  give  you ; 
that — Stay  a  moment — stay.  You  must  pardon  what  I  have  said 
of  you  before  you  made  yourself  known.  I  went  but  by  the 
accounts  I  had  received  from  Mr.  Beaufort.  Let  me  speak 
plainly ;  that  gentleman  thought,  right  or  wrong,  that  it  would 
be  a  great  thing  to  separate  your  brother  from  you.  He  may 
have  found  him — it  must  be  so — and  kept  his  name  and  condi- 
tion concealed  from  us  all,  lest  you  should  detect  it.  Mrs.  M., 
don't  you  think  so?" 

"  I'm  sure  I'm  so  terrified  1  don't  know  what  to  think,"  said 
Mrs.  Morton,  putting  her  hand  to  her  forehead,  and  see-sawing 
herself  to  and  fro  upon  her  stool. 

' '  But  since  they  wronged  you  ;  since  you — you  seem  so  very 
— very — ' ' 

"  Very  much  the  gentleman,"  suggested  Miss  Margaret. 

"Yes,  so  much  the  gentleman;  well  off,  too,  I  should  hope, 
sir," — and  the  experienced  eye  of  Mr.  Morton  glanced  at  the 
costly  sables  that  lined  the  pelisse — "there  can  be  no  difficulty 
in  your  learning  from  Mr.  Beaufort  all  that  you  wish  to  know. 
And  pray,  sir,  may  I  ask,  did  you  send  any  one  here  to-day  to 
make  the  very  inquiry  you  have  made?  " 

"  I  ?     No.     What  do  you  mean  ?  ' ' 

"Well,  well — sit  down;  there  may  be  something  in  all  this 
that  you  may  make  out  better  than  I  can." 

And  as  Philip  obeyed,  Mr.  Morton,  who  was  really  and  hon- 
estly rejoiced  to  see  his  sister's  son  alive  and  apparently  thriving, 
proceeded  to  relate  pretty  exactly  the  conversation  he  had  held 
with  the  previous  visitor.  Philip  listened  earnestly  and  with 
attention.  Who  could  this  questioner  be  ?  Some  one  who  knew 
his  birth  ?  Some  one  who  sought  him  out  ?  Some  one,  who — 
Good  Heavens  !  Could  it  be  the  long-lost  witness  of  the  mar- 
riage ? 

As  soon  as  that  idea  struck  him,  he  started  from  his  seat,  and 
entreated  Morton,  to  accompany  him  in  search  of  the  stranger. 
"You  know  not,"  he  said,  in  a  tone  impressed  with  that  energy 
of  will  in  which  lay  the  talent  of  his  mind, — "  you  know  not  of 
what  importance  this  may  be  to  my  prospects — to  your  sister's 
fair  name.  If  it  should  be  the  witness  returned  at  last !  Whg 


334  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

else,  of  the  rank  you  describe,  would  be  interested  in  such  in- 
quiries? Come !  " 

"What  witness?"  said  Mrs.  Morton,  fretfully.  "You  don't 
mean  to  come  over  us  with  the  old  story  of  the  marriage?" 

"Shall  your  wife  slander  your  own  sister,  sir?  A  marriage 
there  was — God  yet  will  proclaim  the  right — and  the  name  of 
Beaufort  shall  be  yet  placed  on  my  mother's  grave-stone.  Come ! " 

"  Here  are  your  shoes  and  umbrella,  pa,"  cried  Miss  Margaret, 
inspired  by  Philip's  earnestness. 

"  My  fair  cousin,  I  guess,"  and  as  the  soldier  took  her  hand, 
he  kissed  the  unreluctant  cheek — turned  to  the  door — Mr.  Mor- 
ton placed  his  arm  in  his,  and  the  next  moment  they  were  in  the 
street. 

When  Catherine,  in  her  meek  tones  had  said,  "  Philip  Beau- 
fort was  my  husband,"  Roger  Morton  had  disbelieved  her.  And 
now  one  word  from  the  son,  who  could  in  comparison,  know  so 
little  of  the  matter,  had  almost  sufficed  to  convert  and  to  con- 
vince the  sceptic.  Why  was  this?  Because — Man  believes  the 
Strong  ! 

CHAPTER  II. 

« Quid  Virtus  et  quid  Sapientia  possit 

Utile  proposuit  nobis  exemplar  Ulyssem.* — HOR. 

MEANWHILE  the  object  of  their  search,  on  quitting  Mr.  Mor- 
ton's shop,  had  walked  slowly  and  sadly  on,  through  the  plashing 
streets,  till  he  came  to  a  public-house  in  the  outskirts  and  on  the 
high  road  to  London.  Here  he  took  shelter  for  a  short  time, 
drying  himself  by  the  kitchen  fire,  with  the  license  purchased  by 
fourpennyworth  of  gin  ;  and  having  learned  that  the  next  coach 
to  London  would  not  pass  for  some  hours,  he  finally  settled  him- 
self in  the  ingle,  till  the  guard's  horn  should  arouse  him.  By  the 

same  coach  that  the  night  before  had  conveyed  Philip  to  N , 

had  the  very  man  he  sought  been  also  a  passenger  ! 

The  poor  fellow  was  sickly  and  wearied  out:  he  had  settled 
into  a  doze,  when  he  was  suddenly  wakened  by  the  wheels  of  a 
coach  and  the  trampling  of  horses.  Not  knowing  how  long  he 
had  slept,  and  imagining  that  the  vehicle  he  had  awaited  was  at 
the  door,  he  ran  out.  It  was  a  coach  coming  from  London,  and 
the  driver  was  joking  with  a  pretty  bar-maid,  who,  in  rather  short 
petticoats,  was  holding  up  to  him  the  customary  glass.  The  man, 

*  He  has  proposed  to  us  Ulysses  as  a  useful  example  of  how  much  may  be  accomplished  by 
Virtue  ami  Wisdom. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  335 

after  satisfying  himself  that  his  time  was  not  yet  come,  was  turn- 
ing back  to  the  fire,  when  a  head  popped  itself  out  of  the  win- 
dow, and  a  voice  cried:  "  Stars  and  Garters  !  Will — so  that's 
you  !  "  At  the  sound  of  the  voice  the  man  halted  abruptly, 
turned  very  pale,  and  his  limbs  trembled.  The  inside  passenger 
opened  the  door,  jumped  out  with  a  little  carpet-bag  in  his  hand, 
took  forth  a  long  leathern  purse  from  which  he  ostentatiously 
selected  the  coins  that  paid  his  fare  and  satisfied  the  coachman, 
and  then,  passing  his  arm  through  that  of  the  acquaintance  he 
had  discovered,  led  him  back  into  the  house. 

"  Will,  Will,"  he  whispered,  "  you  have  been  to  the  Mortons. 
Never  moind — let's  hear  all.  Jenny  or  Dolly,  or  whatever  your 
sweet  praetty  name  is,  a  private  room  and  a  pint  of  brandy,  my 
dear.  Hot  water  and  lots  of  the  grocery.  That's  right." 

And  as  soon  as  the  pair  found  themselves,  with  the  brandy 
before  them,  in  a  small  parlor  with  a  good  fire,  the  last  comer 
went  to  the  door,  shut  it  cautiously,  flung  his  bag  under  the  table, 
took  off  his  gloves,  spread  himself  wider  and  wider  before  the 
fire,  until  he  had  entirely  excluded  every  ray  from  his  friend,  and 
then  suddenly  turning  so  that  the  back  might  enjoy  what  the 
front  had  gained,  he  exclaimed: 

"Damme,  Will,  you're  a  praetty  sort  of  a  breather  to  give  me 
the  slip  in  that  way.  But  in  this  world,  every  man  for  hisself !  " 

"I  tell  you,"  said  William,  with  something  like  decision  in 
his  voice,  "  that  I  will  not  do  any  wrong  to  these  young  men  if 
they  live." 

"  Who  asks  you  to  do  a  wrong  to  them? — booby !  Perhaps  I 
may  be  the  best  friend  they  may  have  yet.  Ay,  or  you  too, 
though  you're  the  ungratefullest,  whimsicallest  sort  of  a  son  of  a 
gun  that  ever  I  came  across.  Come,  help  yourself,  and  don't 
roll  up  your  eyes  in  that  way,  like  a  Muggletonian  asoide  of  a 
Fye-Fye !  " 

Here  the  speaker  paused  a  moment,  and  with  a  graver  and 
more  natural  tone  of  voice  proceeded  : 

' '  So  you  did  not  believe  me  when  I  told  you  that  these  broth- 
ers were  dead,  and  you  have  been  to  the  Mortons  to  learn  more?  " 

"Yes." 

"  Well,  and  what  have  you  learned?  " 

"  Nothing.  Morton  declares  that  he  does  not  know  that  they 
are  alive,  but  he  says  also  that  he  does  not  know  that  they  are 
dead." 

"  Indeed,"  said  the  other,  listening  with  great  attention ;  "  and 
you  really  think  that  he  does  not  know  anything  about  them?  " 

"I  do,  indeed." 


336  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"  Hum !  Is  he  a  sort  of  a  man  who  would  post  down  the  rhino 
to  help  the  search  ?" 

' '  He  looked  as  if  he  had  the  yellow  fever  when  I  said  I  was 
poor,"  returned  William,  turning  round,  and  trying  to  catch  a 
glimpse  at  the  fire,  as  he  gulped  his  brandy  and  water. 

"  Then  I'll  be  d — d  if  I  run  the  risk  of  calling.  I  have  done 
some  things  in  this  town  by  way  of  business  before  now ;  and 
though  it's  a  long  time  ago,  yet  folks  don't  forget  a  haundsome 
man  in  a  hurry — especially  if  he  has  done  'em  !  Now,  then,  lis- 
ten to  me.  You  see,  I  have  given  this  matter  all  the  'tendon  in 
my  power.  '  If  the  lads  be  dead,'  said  I  to  you,  'it  is  no  use 
burning  one's  fingers  by  holding  a  candle  to  bones  in  a  coffin. 
But  Mr.  Beaufort  need  not  know  they  are  dead,  and  we'll  see 
what  we  can  get  out  of  him ;  and  if  I  succeeds,  as  I  think  I  shall, 
you  and  I  may  hold  up  our  heads  for  the  rest  of  our  life. '  Ac- 
cordingly, as  I  told  you,  I  went  to  Mr.  Beaufort,  and — ;'Gad,  I 
thought  we  had  it  all  our  own  way.  But  since  I  saw  you  last, 
there's  been  the  devil  and  all.  When  I  called  again,  Will,  I 
was  shown  in  to  an  old  lord,  sharp  as  a  gimblet.  Hang  me, 
William,  if  he  did  not  frighten  me  out  of  my  seven  senses  !  " 

Here  Captain  Smith  (the  reader  has,  no  doubt,  already  dis 
covered  that  the  speaker  was  no  less  a  personage)  took  three  or 
four  nervous  strides  across  the  room,  returned  to  the  table,  threw 
himself  in  a  chair,  placed  one  foot  on  one  hob,  and  one  on  the 
other,  laid  his  finger  on  his  nose,  and,  Avith  a  significant  wink, 
said  in  a  whisper:  "  Will,  he  knew  I  had  been  lagged  !  He  not 
only  refused  to  hear  all  I  had  to  say,  but  threatened  to  prosecute 
— persecute,  hang,  draw,  and  quarter  us  both,  if  we  ever  dared 
to  come  out  with  the  truth." 

"  But  what's  the  good  of  the  truth  if  the  boys  are  dead  ?"  said 
William,  timidly. 

The  Captain,  without  heeding  this  question,  continued,  as  he 
stirred  the  sugar  in  his  glass,  "  Well,  out  I  sneaked,  and  as  soon 
as  I  had  got  to  my  own  door  I  turned  round  and  saw  Sharp  the 
runner  on  the  other  side  of  the  way — I  felt  deuced  queer.  How- 
ever, I  went  in,  sat  down,  and  began  to  think.  I  saw  that  it  was 
up  with  us,  so  far  as  the  old  uns  were  concerned  ;  now  it  might 
be  worth  while  to  find  out  if  the  young  uns  were  really  dead." 

"Then  you  did  not  know  that  after  all !  I  thought  so.  Oh, 
Jerry!" 

"  Why,  look  you,  man,  it  was  not  our  interest  to  take  their  side 
if  we  could  make  our  bargain  out  of  the  other.  'Cause  why  ? 
You  are  only  one  witness — you  are  a  good  fellow,  but  poor,  and 
with  very  shaky  nerves,  Will.  You  does  not  know  what  them  big 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  337 

wigs  are  when  a  man's  caged  in  a  witness-box — they  flank  one  up, 
and  they  flank  one  down,  and  they  bully  and  bother,  till  one's  like 
a  horse  at  Astley*s  dancing  on  hot  iron.  If  your  testimony  broke 
down,  why  it  would  be  all  up  with  the  case,  and  what  then  would 
become  of  us?  Besides,"  added  the  captain,  with  dignified  can- 
dor, "I  have  been  lagged,  it's  no  use  denying  it;  I  am  back 
before  my  time.  Inquiries  about  your  respectability  would  soon 
bring  the  bulkies  about  me.  And  you  would  not  have  poor 
Jerry  sent  back  to  that  d — d  low  place  on  t'  other  side  of  the 
Herring-pond,  would  you?" 

''Ah,  Jerry!"  said  William,  kindly  placing  his  hand  in  his 
brother's,  "you  know  I  helped  you  to  escape;  I  left  all  to  come 
over  with  you." 

"  So  you  did,  and  you're  a  good  fellow ;  though  as  to  leaving 
all,  why  you  had  got  rid  of  all  first.  And  when  you  told  me 
about  the  marriage,  did  not  I  say  that  I  saw  our  way  to  a  snug 
thing  for  life?  But  to  icturn  to  my  story.  There  is  a  danger  in 
going  with  the  youngsters.  But  since,  Will,  since  nothing  but 
hard  words  is  to  be  got  on  the  other  side,  we'll  do  our  duty,  and 
I'll  find  them  out,  and  do  the  best  I  can  for  us — that  is,  if  they 
be  yet  above  ground.  And  now  I'll  own  to  you  that  I  think  I 
knows  that  the  younger  one  is  alive." 

"You  do?" 

"  Yes !  But  as  he  won't  come  in  for  anything  unless  his  brother 
is  dead,  we  must  have  a  hunt  for  the  heir.  Now,  I  told  you  that, 
many  years  ago,  there  was  a  lad  with  me,  who,  putting  all  things 
together — seeing  how  the  Beauforts  came  after  him,  and  recol- 
lecting different  things  he  let  out  at  the  time — I  feel  pretty  sure  is 
your  old  master's  Hopeful.  I  know  that  poor  Will  Gawtrey  gave 
this  lad  the  address  of  old  Gregg,  a  friend  of  mine.  So  after 
watching  Sharp  off  the  sly,  I  went  that  very  night,  or  rather  at 
two  in  the  morning,  to  Gregg's  house,  and,  after  brushing  up  his 
memory,  I  found  that  the  lad  had  been  to  him,  and  gone  over 
afterwards  to  Paris  in  search  of  Gawtrey,  who  was  then  keeping 
a  matrimony  shop.  As  I  was  not  rich  enough  to  go  off  to  Paris 
in  a  pleasant,  gentlemanlike  way,  I  allowed  Gregg  to  put  me  up 
to  a  noice,  quiet,  little  bit  of  business.  Don't  shake  your  head  — 
all  safe — a  rural  affair  !  That  took  some  days.  You  see  it  has 
helped  to  new  rig  me,"  and  the  captain  glanced  complacently 
over  a  very  smart  suit  of  clothes.  "Well,  on  my  return  I  went 
to  call  on  you,  but  you  were  flown.  I  half  suspected  you  might 
have  gone  to  the  mother's  relations  here ;  and  I  thought,  at  all 
events,  that  I  could  not  do  better  than  go  myself  and  see  what 
they  knew  of  the  matter.  From  what  you  cay  I  feel  I  had  better 

22 


338  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

now  let  that  alone,  and  go  over  to  Paris  at  once ;  leave  me  alone 
to  find  out.  And  faith,  what  with  Sharp  and  the  old  lord,  the 
sooner  I  quit  England  the  better. ' ' 

"And  you  really  think  you  shall  get  hold  of  them  after  all? 
Oh,  never  fear  my  nerves  if  I'm  once  in  the  right;  it's  living  with 
you,  and  seeing  you  do  wrong,  and  hearing  you  talk  wickedly, 
that  makes  me  tremble." 

"Bother!"  said  the  captain,  "you  need  not  crow  over  me 
Stand  up,  Will ;  there  now,  look  at  us  two  in  the  glass  !  Why,  I 
look  ten  years  younger  than  you  do,  in  spite  of  all  my  troubles. 
I  dress  like  a  gentleman,  as  I  am ;  I  have  money  in  my  pocket ;  I 
put  money  in  yours ;  without  me  you'd  starve.  Look  you,  you 
carried  over  a  little  fortune  to  Australia;  you  married ,  you 
farmed;  you  lived  honestly,  and  yet  that  d — d  shilly-shally  dis- 
position of  yours,  'ticed  you  into  one  speculation  to-day  and 
scared  you  of  another  to-morrow,  ruined  you  !  " 

"Jerry!  Jerry  !  "  cried  William,  writhing;   "don't — don't." 

"  But  it's  all  true,  and  I  want's  to  cure  you  of  preaching.  And 
then,  when  you  were  nearly  run  out,  instead  of  putting  a  bold 
face  on  it,  and  setting  your  shoulder  to  the  wheel,  you  gives  it  up ; 
you  sells  what  you  have  ;  you  bolts  over,  wife  and  all,  to  Boston, 
because  some  one  tells  you  you  can  do  better  in  America ;  you  are 
out  of  the  way  when  a  search  is  made  for  you; — years  ago  when 
you  could  have  benefited  yourself  and  your  master's  family  with- 
out any  danger  to  you  or  me — nobody  can  find  you ;  'cause  why, 
you  could  not  bear  that  your  old  friends  in  England,  or  in  the 
colony  either,  should  know  that  you  were  turned  a  slave  driver  in 
Kentucky.  You  kick  up  a  mutiny  among  the  niggers  by  moaning 
over  them,  instead  of  keeping  'em  to  it ;  you  get  kicked  out  your- 
self; your  wife  begs  you  to  go  back  to  Australia,  where  her  rela- 
tions will  do  something  for  you ;  you  work  your  passage  out,  look- 
ing as  ragged  as  a  colt  from  grass;  wife's  uncle  don't  like  ragged 
nephews-in-law ;  wife  dies  broken-hearted;  and  you  might  be 
breaking  stones  on  the  roads  with  the  convicts,  if  I,  myself  a  con- 
vict, had  not  taken  compassion  on  you.  Don't  cry,  Will,  it  is  all 
for  your  own  good — I  hates  cant !  Whereas  I,  my  own  master 
from  eighteen,  never  stooped  to  serve  any  other ;  have  dressed  like 
a  gentleman ;  kissed  the  pretty  girls ;  drove  my  pheaton ;  been  in 
all  the  papers  as  '  the  celebrated  Dashing  Jerry ;  '  never  wanted  a 
guinea  in  my  pocket;  and  even  when  lagged  at  last,  had  a  pretty 
little  sum  in  the  colonial  bank  to  lighten  my  misfortunes.  I 
escape;  I  bring  you  over;  and  here  I  am,  supporting  you,  and, 
in  all  probability,  the  one  on  whom  depends  the  fate  of  one  of 
the  first  families  in  the  country.  And  you  preaches  at  me,  do 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  339 

you?  Look  you,  Will;  in  this  world,  honesty's  nothing  without 
force  of  character !  And  so  your  health  !  " 

Here  the  captain  emptied  the  rest  of  the  brandy  into  his  glass, 
drained  it  at  a  draught,  and,  while  poor  William  was  wiping  his 
eyes  with  a  ragged  blue  pocket-handkerchief,  rang  the  bell,  and 

asked  what  coaches  would  pass  that  way  to ,  a  seaport  town 

at  some  distance.  On  hearing  that  there  was  one  at  six  o'clock, 
the  captain  ordered  the  best  dinner  the  larder  would  afford  to  be 
got  ready  as  soon  as  possible;  and,  when  they  were  again  alone, 
thus  accosted  his  brother : 

' '  Now  you  go  back  to  town — here  are  four  shiners  for  you. 
Keep  quiet — don't  speak  to  a  soul — don't  putyeur  foot  in  it,  that's 
all  I  beg,  and  I'll  find  out  whatever  there  is  to  be  found.  It  is 

damnably  out  of  my  way  embarking  at ,  but  I  had  best  keep 

clear  of  Lunnon.  And  I  tell  you  what,  if  these  youngsters  have 
hopped  the  twig,  there's  another  bird  on  the  bough  that  may 
prove  a  goldfinch  after  all — Young  Arthur  Beaufort.  I  hear  he  is 
a  wild,  expensive  chap,  and  one  who  can't  live  without  lots  of 
money.  Now,  it's  easy  to  frighten  a  man  of  that  sort,  and  I 
sha'n't  have  the  old  lord  at  his  elbow." 

"  But  I  tell  you,  that  I  only  care  for  my  poor  master's  children." 

"  Yes;  but  if  they  are  dead,  and  by  saying  they  are  alive  one 
can  make  old  age  comfortable,  there's  no  harm  in  it — eh?  " 

"I  don't  know,"  said  William,  irresolutely.  "But  certainly  it 
is  a  hard  thing  to  be  so  poor  at  my  time  of  life ;  and  so  honest  a 
man  as  I've  been,  too !  " 

Captain  Smith  went  a  little  too  far  when  he  said  that  "honesty's 
nothing  without  force  of  character."  Still  Honesty  has  no  busi- 
ness to  be  helpless  and  draggletailed  ;  she  must  be  active  and 
brisk,  and  make  use  of  her  wits;  or,  though  she  keep  clear  of  the 
prison,  'tis  no  very  great  wonder  if  she  fall  on  the  parish. 

CHAPTER  III. 

"  Mills. — This  Macilente,  signior,  begins  to  be  more  sociable  on  a  sudden.' 

Every  man  out  of  his  Humor. 

"  Punt. — Signior,  you  are  sufficiently  instructed. 
Fast.—  Who,  I,  sir?"— Ibid. 

AFTER  spending  the  greater  part  of  the  day  in  vain  inquiries 
and  a  vain  search,  Philip  and  Mr.  Morton  returned  to  the  house 
of  the  latter. 

"And  now,"  said  Philip,  "  all  that  remains  to  be  done  is  this ; 
first,  give  to  the  police  of  the  town  a  detailed  description  of  the 


340  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

man  ;  and,  secondly,  let  us  put  an  advertisement  both  in  the 
county  journal  and  in  some  of  the  London  papers,  to  the  effect, 
that  if  the  person  who  called  on  you  will  take  the  trouble  to  apply 
again,  either  personally  or  by  letter,  he  may  obtain  the  informa- 
tion sought  for.  In  case  he  does,  I  will  trouble  you  to  direct  him 
to — yes — to  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  according  to  this  address." 

"Not  to  you,  then?  " 

"It  is  the  same  thing,"  replied  Philip,  drily.  "You  have 
confirmed  my  suspicions,  that  the  Beauforts  know  something  of 
my  brother.  What  did  you  say  of  some  other  friend  of  the  fam- 
ily who  assisted  in  the  search?  " 

"  Oh, — a  Mr.  Spencer  !  An  old  acquaintance  of  your  moth- 
er's." Here  Mr.  Morton  smiled,  but  not  being  encouraged  in  a 
joke,  went  on  :  "  However,  that's  neither  here  nor  there;  he  cer- 
tainly never  found  out  your  brother.  For  I  have  had  several  let- 
ters from  him  at  different  times,  asking  if  any  news  had  been 
heard  of  either  of  you." 

And,  indeed,  Spencer  had  taken  peculiar  pains  to  deceive  the 
Mortons,  whose  interposition  he  feared  little  less  than  that  of  the 
Beauforts. 

"  Then  it  can  be  of  no  use  to  apply  to  him,"  said  Philip  care- 
lessly, not  having  any  recollection  of  the  name  of  Spencer,  and 
therefore  attaching  little  importance  to  the  mention  of  him. 

"  Certainly,  I  should  think  not.  Depend  on  it,  Mr.  Beaufort 
must  know." 

"True,"  said  Philip.  "And  I  have  only  to  thank  you  for 
your  kindness,  and  return  to  town." 

"  But  stay  with  us  this  day — do ;  let  me  feel  that  we  are  friends. 
I  assure  you,  poor  Sidney's  fate  has  been  a  load  on  my  mind  ever 
since  he  left.  You  shall  have  the  bed  he  slept  in,  and  over  which 
your  mother  bent  when  she  left  him  and  me  for  the  last  time." 

These  words  were  said  with  so  much  feeling,  that  the  advent- 
urer wrung  his  uncle's  hand,  and  said  :  "  Forgive  me,  I  wronged 
you — I  will  be  your  guest." 

Mrs.  Morton,  strange  to  say,  evinced  no  symptoms  of  ill-humor 
at  the  news  of  the  proffered  hospitality.  In  fact,  Miss  Margaret 
had  been  so  eloquent  in  Philip's  praise  during  his  absence,  that 
she  suffered  herself  to  be  favorably  impressed.  Her  daughter, 
indeed,  had  obtained  a  sort  of  ascendancy  over  Mrs.  M.  and  the 
whole  house,  ever  since  she  had  received  so  excellent  an  offer. 
And  moreover,  some  people  are  like  dogs :  they  snarl  at  the 
ragged  and  fawn  on  the  well-dressed.  Mrs.  Morton  did  not 
object  to  a  nephew  de  facto,  she  only  objected  to  a  nephew  in 
forma  panperis.  The  evening,  therefore,  passed  more  cheerfully 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  *41 

than  might  have  been  anticipated,  though  Philip  found  some  dif- 
ficulty in  parrying  the  many  questions  put  to  him  on  the  past. 
He  contented  himself  with  saying,  as  briefly  as  possible,  that  he 
had  served  in  a  foreign  service,  and  acquired  what  sufficed  him 
for  an  independence;  and  then,  with  the  ease  which  a  man  picks 
up  in  the  great  world,  turned  the  conversation  to  the  prospects  of 
the  family  whose  guest  he  was.  Having  listened  with  due  atten- 
tion to  Mrs.  Morton's  eulogies  on  Tom,  who  had  been  sent  for, 
and  who  drank  the  praises  on  his  own  gentility  into  a  very  large 
pair  of  blushing  ears  ;  also,  to  her  self-felicitations  on  Miss  Mar- 
garet's marriage ;  item,  on  the  service  rendered  to  the  town  by 
Mr.  Roger,  who  had  repaired  the  town-hall  in  his  first  mayoralty 
at  his  own  expense ;  item,  to  a  long  chronicle  of  her  own  geneal- 
ogy, how  she  had  one  cousin,  a  clergyman,  and  how  her  great 
grandfather  had  been  knighted  ;  item,  to  the  domestic  virtues  of 
ail  her  children ;  item,  to  a  confused  explanation  of  the  chastise- 
ment inflicted  on  Sidney,  which  Philip  cut  short  in  the  middle; 
he  asked,  with  a  smile,  what  had  become  of  the  Plaskwiths. 
"  Oh  !  "  said  Mrs.  Morton,  "  my  brother  Kit  has  retired  from 
business.  His  son-in-law,  Mr.  Plimmins,  has  succeeded." 

"  Oh,  then,  Plimmins  married  one  of  the  young  ladies?  " 

"  Yes,  Jane ;  she  had  a  sad  squint !  Tom,  there  is  nothing  to 
laugh  at ;  we  are  all  as  God  made  us — '  Handsome  is  as  hand- 
some does,' — she  has  had  three  little  uns  !  " 

"Do  they  squint  too?"  asked  Philip;  and  Miss  Margaret 
giggled,  and  Tom  roared,  and  the  other  young  men  roared  too. 
Philip  had  certainly  said  something  very  witty. 

This  time  Mrs.  Morton  administered  no  reproof;  but  replied, 
pensively : 

"  Natur  is  very  mysterious — they  all  squint !  " 

Mr.  Morton  conducted  Philip  to  his  chamber.  There  it  was, 
fresh,  clean,  unaltered — the  same  white  curtains,  the  same  honey- 
suckle paper,  as  when  Catherine  had  crept  across  the  threshold. 

' '  Did  Sidney  ever  tell  you  that  his  mother  placed  a  ring  round 
his  neck  that  night?  "  asked  Mr.  Morton. 

' '  Yes ;  and  the  dear  boy  wept  when  he  said  that  he  had  slept 
too  soundly  to  know  that  she  was  by  his  side  that  last,  last  time. 
The  ring — oh,  how  well  I  remember  it ! — she  never  put  it  off  till 
then ;  and  often  in  the  fields — for  we  were  wild  wanderers 
together  in  that  day — often  when  his  head  lay  on  my  shoulder,  I 
felt  that  ring  still  resting  on  his  heart,  and  fancied  it  was  a  talis- 
man— a  blessing.  Well,  well,  good-night  to  you  !  "  And  he 
shut  the  door  on  his  uncle,  and  was  alone. 


342  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

"  The  Man  of  Law,     *     *     * 

And  a  great  suit  is  like  to  be  between  them." 

BEN  JONSON  ;  Staple  of  News. 

ON  arriving  in  London,  Philip  went  first  to  the  lodging  he  still 
kept  there,  and  to  which  his  letters  were  directed ;  and,  among 
some  communications  from  Paris,  full  of  the  politics  and  the 
hopes  of  the  Carlists,  he  found  the  following  note  from  Lord 
Lilburne. 

"DEAR  SIR, — When  I  met  you  the  other  day,  I  told  you  I 
had  been  threatened  with  the  gout.  The  enemy  has  now  taken 
possession  of  the  field.  I  am  sentenced  to  regimen  and  the  sofa. 
But  as  it  is  my  rule  in  life  to  make  afflictions  as  light  as  possible, 
so  I  have  asked  a  few  friends  to  take  compassion  on  me,  and  help 
me  '  to  shuffle  off  this  mortal  coil,'  by  dealing  me,  if  they  can, 
four  by  honors.  Any  time  between  nine  and  twelve  to-night,  or 
to-morrow  night,  you  will  find  me  at  home ;  and  if  you  are  not 
better  engaged,  suppose  you  dine  with  me  to-day — or  rather  dine 
opposite  to  me — and  excuse  my  Spartan  broth.  You  will  meet 
(besides  any  two  or  three  friends  whom  an  impromptu  invitation 
may  find  disengaged)  my  sister,  with  Beaufort  and  their  daugh- 
ter :  they  only  arrived  in  town  this  morning,  and  are  kind  enough 
'  to  nurse  me,'  as  they  call  it, — that  is  to  say,  their  cook  is  taken 
ill!  "Yours, 

"  LILBURNE. 

«  Park  Lane,  Sept. " 

"  The  Beau  forts.  Fate  favors  me — I  will  go.  The  date  is  for 
to-day."  He  sent  off  a  hasty  line  to  accept  the  invitation,  and 
finding  he  had  a  few  hours  yet  to  spare,  he  resolved  to  employ 
them  in  consultation  with  some  lawyer  as  to  the  chances  of  ulti- 
mately regaining  his  inheritance — a  hope  which,  however  wild,  he 
had,  since  his  return  to  his  native  shore,  and  especially  since  he 
had  heard  of  the  strange  visit  made  to  Roger  Morton,  permitted 
himself  to  indulge.  With  this  idea  he  sallied  out,  meaning  to 
consult  Liancourt,  who,  having  a  large  acquaintance  among  the 
English,  seemed  the  best  person  to  advise  him  as  to  the  choice  of 
a  lawyer  at  once  active  and  honest, — when  he  suddenly  chanced 
upon  that  gentleman  himself. 

"This  is  lucky,  my  dear  Liancourt.  I  was  just  going  to  your 
lodgings." 

"  And  I  was  coming  to  yours  to  know  if  you  dine  with  Lord 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  343 

Lilburne.  He  told  me  he  had  asked  you.  I  have  just  left  him. 
And  by  the  sofa  of  Mephistopheles,  there  was  the  prettiest  Mar- 
garet you  ever  beheld." 

"Indeed!     Who?" 

"He  called  her  his  niece;  but  I  should  doubt  if  he  had  any 
relation  on, this  side  the  Styx  so  human  as  a  niece." 

"You  seem  to  have  no  great  predilection  for  our  host." 

"  My  dear  Vaudemont,  between  our  blunt,  soldierly  natures, 
and  those  wily,  icy,  sneering  intellects,  there  is  the  antipathy  of 
the  dog  to  the  cat." 

"  Perhaps  so  on  our  side,  not  on  his — or  why  does  he  invite 
us?" 

' '  London  is  empty,  there  is  no  one  else  to  ask.  We  are  new  faces, 
new  minds  to  him.  We  amuse  him  more  than  the  hackneyed 
comrades  he  has  worn  out.  Besides,  he  plays — and  you  too.  Fie 
on  you  ! 

"  Liancourt,  I  had  two  objects  in  knowing  that  man,  and  I 
pay  the  toll  for  the  bridge.  When  I  cease  to  want  the  passage,  I 
shall  cease  to  pay  the  toll." 

"  But  the  bridge  may  be  a  draw-bridge,  and  tne  moat  is  devil- 
lish  deep  below.  Without  metaphor,  that  man  may  ruin  you 
before  you  know  where  you  are." 

"  Bah  !  I  have  my  eyes  open.  I  know  how  much  to  spend  on 
the  rogue,  whose  service  I  hire  as  a  lackey's ;  and  I  know  also 
where  to  stop.  Liancourt,"  he  added,  after  a  short  pause,  and  in 
a  tone  deep  with  suppressed  passion,  "  when  I  first  saw  that  man, 
I  thought  of  appealing  to  his  heart  for  one  who  has  a  claim  on  it. 
That  was  a  vain  hope.  And  then  there  came  upon  me  a  sterner 
and  deadlier  thought — the  scheme  of  the  Avenger !  This  Lil- 
burne— this  rogue  whom  the  world  sets  up  to  worship — ruined, 
body  and  soul  ruined,  one  whose  -name  the  world  gibbets  with 
scorn  !  Well,  I  thought  to  avenge  that  man.  In  his  own  house — 
amidst  you  all — I  thought  to  detect  the  sharper,  and  brand  the 
cheat !  " 

"  You  startle  me !  It  has  been  whispered,  indeed,  that  Lord 
Lilburne  is  dangerous, — but  skill  is  dangerous.  To  cheat !  An 
English  gentleman  !  A  nobleman  !  Impossible !  " 

"  Whether  he  do  or  not,"  returned  Vaudemont,  in  a  calmer 
tone,  "  I  have  foregone  the  vengeance,  because  he  is — " 

"Is  what?  " 

"  No  matter,"  said  Vaudemont  aloud,  but  he  added  to  himself : 
"  Because  he  is  the  grandfather  of  Fanny  !  " 

"  You  are  very  enigmatical  to-day." 

"Patience,  Liancourt;  I  may  solve  all  the  riddles  that  make 


344 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 


up  my  life,  yet.  Bear  with  me  a  little  longer.  And  now  can  you 
help  me  to  a  lawyer? — a  man  experienced,  indeed,  and  of  repute, 
but  young,  active,  not  overladen  with  business ;  I  want  his  zeal 
and  his  time,  for  a  hazard  that  your  monopolists  of  clients  may 
not  deem  worth  their  devotion." 

' '  I  can  recommend  you,  then,  the  very  man  you  require.  I 
had  a  suit  some  years  ago  at  Paris,  for  which  English  witnesses 
were  necessary.  My  avocat  employed  a  solicitor  here  whose 
activity  in  collecting  my  evidence  gained  ray  cause.  I  will 
answer  for  his  diligence  and  his  honesty." 

"His  address?" 

"  Mr.  Barlow — somewhere  by  the  Strand.  Let  me  see — Essex 
— yes,  Essex  street." 

"  Then  good-by  to  you  for  the  present.  You  dine  at  Lord 
Lilburne's  too?  " 

"Yes.     Adieu  till  then." 

Vaudemont  was  not  long  before  he  arrived  at  Mr.  Barlow's ;  a 
brass-plate  announced  to  him  the  house.  He  was  shown  at  once 
into  a  parlor,  where  he  saw  a  man  whom  lawyers  would  call 
young,  and  spinsters  middle-aged,  viz.,  about  two-and-forty ; 
with  a  bold,  resolute,  intelligent  countenance,  and  that  steady, 
calm,  sagacious  eye,  which  inspires  at  once  confidence  and 
esteem. 

Vaudemont  scanned  him  with  the  look  of  one  who  has  been 
accustomed  to  judge  mankind — as  a  scholar  does  books — with 
rapidity  because  with  practice.  He  had  at  first  resolved  to  submit 
to  him  the  heads  of  his  case  without  mentioning  names,  and,  in 
fact,  he  so  commenced  his  narrative  ;  but  by  degrees,  as  he  per- 
ceived how  much  his  own  earnestness  arrested  and  engrossed  the 
interest  of  his  listener,  he  warmed  into  fuller  confidence,  and 
ended  by  a  full  disclosure,  and  a  caution  as  to  the  profoundest 
secrecy  in  case,  if  there  were  no  hope  to  recover  his  rightful 
name,  he  might  yet  wish  to  retain,  unannoyed  by  curiosity  or  sus- 
picion, that  by  which  he  was  not  discreditably  known. 

"Sir,"  said  Mr.  Barlow,  after  assuring  him  of  the  most  scrup- 
ulous discretion;  "Sir,  I  have  some  recollection  of  the  trial 
instituted  by  your  mother,  Mrs.  Beaufort" — and  the  slight 
emphasis  he  laid  on  that  name  was  the  most  grateful  compliment 
he  could  have  paid  to  the  truth  of  Philip's  recital.  "  My  impres- 
sion is,  that  it  was  managed  in  a  very  slovenly  manner  by  her 
lawyer ;  and  some  of  his  oversights  we  may  repair  in  a  suit  insti- 
tuted by  yourself.  But  it  would  be  absurd  to  conceal  from  you 
the  great  difficulties  that  beset  us ;  your  mother's  suit,  designed 
to  establish  her  own  rights,  was  far  easier  than  that  which  you 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  545 

must  commence,  viz.,  an  action  for  ejectment  against  a  man  who 
has  been  some  years  in  undisturbed  possession.  Of  course,  until 
the  missing  witness  is  found  out,  it  would  be  madness  to  com- 
mence litigation.  And  the  question,  then,  will  be,  how  far  that 
witness  will  suffice  ?  It  is  true,  that  one  witness  of  a  marriage,  if 
the  others  are  dead,  is  held  sufficient  by  law.  But  I  need  not 
add,  that  that  witness  must  be  thoroughly  credible.  In  suits  for 
real  property,  very  little  documentary  or  secondary  evidence  is 
admitted.  I  doubt  even  whether  the  certificate  of  the  marriage 
on  which — in  the  loss  or  destruction  of  the  register — you  lay  so 
much  stress,  would  be  available  in  itself.  But  if  an  examined 
copy,  it  becomes  of  the  last  importance,  for  it  will  then  inform 
us  of  the  name  of  the  person  who  extracted  and  examined  it. 
Heaven  grant  it  may  not  have  been  the  clergyman  himself  who 
performed  the  ceremony,  and  who,  you  say,  is  dead ;  if  some  one 
else,  we  should  then  have  a  second,  no  doubt  credible  and  most 
valuable,  witness.  The  document  would  thus  become  available 
as  proof,  and,  I  think,  that  we  should  not  fail  to  establish  our 
case." 

"But  this  certificate,  how  is  it  ever  to  be  found?  I  told  you 
we  had  searched  everywhere  in  vain." 

"True ;  but  you  say  that  your  mother  always  declared  that  the 
late  Mr.  Beaufort  had  so  solemnly  assured  her,  even  just  prior  to 
his  decease,  that  it  was  in  existence,  that  I  have  no  doubt  as  to 
the  fact.  It  may  be  possible,  but  it  is  a  terrible  insinuation  to 
make,  that  if  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort,  in  examining  the  papers  of 
the  deceased,  chanced  upon  a  document  so  important  to  him,  he 
abstracted  or  destroyed  it.  If  this  should  not  have  been  the  case 
(and  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort's  moral  character  is  unspotted,  and  we 
have  no  right  to  suppose  it),  the  probability  is,  either  that  it  was 
intrusted  to  some  third  person,  or  placed  in  some  hidden  drawer 
or  deposit,  the  secret  of  which  your  father  never  disclosed.  Who 
has  purchased  the  house  you  lived  in  ?  " 

"  Fernside  ?    Lord  Lilburne.    Mrs.  Robert  Beaufort's  brother  " 

"  Humph  !  probably,  then,  he  took  the  furniture  and  all.  Sir, 
this  is  a  matter  that  requires  some  time  for  close  consideration. 
With  your  leave,  I  will  not  only  insert  in  the  London  papers  an 
advertisement  to  the  effect  that  you  suggested  to  Mr.  Roger  Mor- 
ton (in  case  you  should  have  made  a  right  conjecture  as  to  the 
object  of  the  man  who  applied  to  him),  but  I  will  also  advertise 
for  the  witness  himself.  William  Smith,  you  say,  his  name  is. 
Did  the  lawyer  employed  by  Mrs.  Beaufort  send  to  inquire  for 
him  in  the  colony  ?  " 

"  No  j  I  fear  there  could  not  have  been  time  for  that.     My 


346  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

mother  was  so  anxious  and  eager,  and  so  convinced  of  the  justice 
of  her  case — " 

"  That's  a  pity  ;  her  lawyer  must  have  been  a  sad  driveller." 

"  Besides,  now  I  remember,  inquiry  was  made  of  his  relations 
in  England.  His  father,  a  farmer,  was  then  alive  ;  the  answer 
was  that  he  had  certainly  left  Australia.  His  last  letter,  written 
two  years  before  that  date,  containing  a  request  for  money,  which 
the  father,  himself  made  a  bankrupt  by  reverses,  could  not  give, 
had  stated  that  he  was  about  to  seek  his  fortune  elsewhere — since 
then  they  had  heard  nothing  of  him." 

"  Ahem  !  Well,  you  will  perhaps  let  me  know  where  any  re- 
lations of  his  are  yet  to  be  found,  and  I  will  look  up  the  former 
suit,  and  go  into  the  whole  case  without  delay.  In  the  meantime, 
you  do  right,  sir — if  you  will  allow  me  to  say  it — not  to  disclose 
either  your  own  identity  or  a  hint  of  your  intentions.  It  is  no 
use  putting  suspicion  on  its  guard.  And  my  search  for  this  cer- 
tificate must  be  managed  with  the  greatest  address.  But,  by  the 
way — speaking  of  identity — there  can  be  no  difficulty,  I  hope,  in 
proving  yours." 

Philip  was  startled.     "  Why,  I  am  greatly  altered." 

"But  probably  your  beard  and  moustache  may  contribute  to 
that  change ;  and  doubtless,  in  the  village  where  you  lived,  there 
would  be  many  with  whom  you  were  in  sufficient  intercourse,  and 
on  whose  recollection,  by  recalling  little  anecdotes  and  circum- 
stances with  which  no  one  but  yourself  could  be  acquainted,  your 
features  would  force  themselves  along  with  the  moral  conviction 
that  the  man  who  spoke  to  them  could  be  no  other  but  Philip 
Morton — or  rather  Beaufort." 

"  You  are  right;  there  must  be  many  such.  There  was  not  a 
cottage  in  the  place  where  I  and  my  dogs  were  not  familiar  and 
half  domesticated." 

"  All's  right,  so  far,  then.  But,  I  repeat,  we  must  not  be  too 
sanguine.  Law  is  not  justice — " 

"  But  God  is,"  said  Philip ;  and  he  left  the  room. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  347 

CHAPTER  V. 

"  Volpone.     A  little  in  a  mist,  but  not  dejected : 
Never — but  still  myself." 

BEN  JONSON  :   Volpone. 

"  Peregrine.     Am  I  enough  disguised  ? 
Mer.     Ay,  I  warrant  you. 
Per.     Save  you,  fair  lady." — Ibid. 

IT  is  an  ill  wind  that  blows  nobody  good.  The  ill  wind  that 
had  blown  gout  to  Lord  Lilburne  had  blown  Lord  Lilburne  away 
from  the  injury  he  had  meditated  against  what  he  called  "the 
object  of  his  attachment."  How  completely  and  entirely,  indeed, 
the  state  of  Lord  Lilburne's  feelings  depended  on  the  state  of  his 
health,  may  be  seen  in  the  answer  he  gave  to  his  valet,  when,  the 
morning  after  the  first  attack  of  the  gout,  that  worthy  person,  by 
way  of  cheering  his  master,  proposed  to  ascertain  something  as  to 
the  movements  of  one  with  whom  Lord  Lilburne  professed  to  be 
so  violently  in  love:  "Confound  you,  Dykeman  !  "  exclaimed 
the  invalid,  "  why  do  you  trouble  me  about  women  when  I'm  in 
this  condition  ?  I  don't  care  if  they  were  all  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea  !  Reach  me  the  colchicum ;  I  must  keep  my  mind  calm." 

Whenever  tolerably  well}  Lord  Lilburne  was  careless  of  his 
health ;  the  moment  he  was  ill,  Lord  Lilburne  paid  himself  the 
greatest  possible  attention.  Though  a  man  of  firm  nerves,  in  youth 
of  remarkable  daring,  and  still,  though  no  longer  rash,  of  sufficient 
personal  courage,  he  was  by  no  means  fond  of  the  thought  of 
death — that  is,  of  his  own  death.  Not  that  he  was  tormented  by 
any  religious  apprehension  of  the  Dread  Unknown,  but  simply 
because  the  only  life  of  which  he  had  any  experience  seemed  to 
him  a  peculiarly  pleasant  thing.  He  had  a  sort  of  instinctive 
persuasion  that  John  Lord  Lilburne  would  not  be  better  off  any 
where  else.  Always  disliking  solitude,  he  disliked  it  more  than 
ever  when  he  was  ill,  and  he  therefore  welcomed  the  visit  of  his 
sister  and  the  gentle  hand  of  his  pretty  niece.  As  for  Beaufort, 
he  bored  the  sufferer ;  and  when  that  gentleman  on  his  arrival, 
shutting  out  his  wife  and  daughter,  whispered  to  Lilburne  :  "  Any 
more  news  of  that  impostor?"  Lilburne  answered,  peevishly, 
' '  I  never  talk  about  business  when  I  have  the  gout !  I  have  set 
Sharp  to  keep  a  look-out  for  him,  but  he  has  learned  nothing  as 
yet.  And  now  go  to  your  club.  You  are  a  worthy  creature,  but 
too  solemn  for  my  spirits  just  at  this  moment.  I  have  a  few 
people  coming  to  dine  with  me,  your  wife  will  do  the  honors  and 
— you  can  come  in  the  evening." 


348  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Though  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort's  sense  of  importance  swelled  and 
chafed  at  this  very  unceremonious  conge,  he  forced  a  smile,  and 
said : 

"  Well,  it  is  no  wonder  you  are  a  little  fretful  with  the  gout. 
I  have  plenty  to  do  in  town,  and  Mrs.  Beaufort  and  Camilla  can 
come  back  without  waiting  for  me." 

"  Why,  as  your  cook  is  ill,  and  they  can't  dine  at  a  club,  you 
may  as  well  leave  them  here  till  I  am  a  little  better ;  not  that  I 
care,  for  I  can  hire  a  better  nurse  than  either  of  them." 

"My  dear  Lilburne,  don't  talk  of  hiring  nurses;  certainly,  I 
am  too  happy  if  they  can  be  of  comfort  to  you." 

"  No !  On  second  thoughts,  you  may  take  back  your  wife  ; 
she's  always  talking  of  her  own  complaints,  and  leave  me  Camilla  ; 
you  can;t  want  her  for  a  few  days." 

' '  Just  as  you  like.  And  you  really  think  I  have  managed  as 
well  as  I  could  about  this  young  man, — eh?  " 

"Yes — yes!  And  so  you  go  to  Beaufort  Court  in  a  few 
days  ? ' ' 

"I  propose  doing  so.     I  wish  you  were  well  enough  to  come." 

"  Um  !  Chambers  says  that  it  would  be  a  very  good  air  for 
me — better  than  Fernside ;  and  as  to  my  castle  in  the  north,  I 
would  as  soon  go  to  Siberia.  Well,  if  I  get  better,  I  will  pay  you 
a  visit,  only  you  always  have  such  a  stupid  set  of  respectable 
people  about  you.  I  shock  them,  and  they  oppress  me." 

"  Why,  as  I  hope  soon  to  see  Arthur,  I  shall  make  it  as  agree- 
able to  him  as  I  can,  and  I  shall  be  very  much  obliged  to  you  if 
you  would  invite  a  few  of  your  own  friends." 

"Well,  you  are  a  good  fellow,  Beaufort,  and  I  will  take  you  at 
your  word ;  and,  since  one  good  turn  deserves  another,  I  have 
now  no  scruple  in  telling  you  that  I  feel  quite  sure  that  you  will 
have  no  further  annoyance  from  this  troublesome  witness-monger. ' ' 

"  In  that  case,"  said  Beaufort,  "  I  may  pick  up  a  better  match 
for  Camilla  !  Good~by,  my  dear  Lilburne." 

"  Form  and  Ceremony  of  the  world  !  "  snarled  the  peer,  as  the 
door  closed  on  his  brother-in-law,  ' '  ye  make  little  men  very 
moral,  and  not  a  bit  the  better  for  being  so !  " 

It  so  happened  that  Vaudemont  arrived  before  any  of  the 
other  guests  that  day,  and  during  the  half  hour  which  Dr.  Cham- 
bers assigned  to  his  illustrious  patient,  so  that,  when  he  entered, 
there  were  only  Mrs.  Beaufort  and  Camilla  in  the  drawing-room. 

Vaudemont  drew  back  involuntarily,  as  he  recognized  in  the 
faded  countenance  of  the  elder  lady  features  associated  with  one 
of  the  dark  passages  in  his  earlier  life;  but  Mrs.  Beaufort's 
gracious  smile,  and  urbane,  though  languid,  welcome,  sufficed  to 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  349 

assure  him  that  the  recognition  was  not  mutual.  He  advanced, 
and  again  stopped  short,  as  his  eye  fell  upon  that  fair  and  still 
childlike  form,  which  had  once  knelt  by  his  side  and  pleaded, 
with  the  orphan,  for  his  brother.  While  he  spoke  to  her,  many 
recollections,  some  dark  and  stern, — but  those,  at  least,  connected 
with  Camilla,  soft  and  gentle— thrilled  through  his  heart.  Occu- 
pied as  her  own  thoughts  and  feelings  necessarily  were  with  Sid- 
ney, there  was  something  in  Vaudemont's  appearance,  his  manner, 
his  voice,  which  forced  upon  Camilla  a  strange  and  undefined 
interest:  and  even  Mrs.  Beaufort  was  roused  from  her  customary 
apathy,  as  she  glanced  to  that  dark  and  commanding  face  with 
something  between  admiration  and  fear.  Vaudemont  had  scarcely, 
however,  spoken  ten  words,  when  some  other  guests  were  announced, 
and  Lord  Lilburne  was  wheeled  in  upon  his  sofa  shortly  after- 
wards. Vaudemont  continued,  however,  seated  next  to  Camilla, 
and  the  embarrassment  he  had  at  first  felt,  disappeared.  He 
possessed,  when  he  pleased  it,  that  kind  of  eloquence  which 
belongs  to  men  who  have  seen  much  and  felt  deeply,  and  whose 
talk  has  not  been  frittered  down  to  the  commonplace  jargon  of  the 
world.  His  very  phraseology  was  distinct  and  peculiar,  and  he 
had  that  rarest  of  all  charms  in  polished  life,  originality  both  of 
thought  and  of  manner.  Camilla  blushed,  when  she  found  at 
dinner  that  he  placed  himself  by  her  side.  That  evening De  Vau- 
demont excused  himself  from  playing,  but  the  table  was  easily 
made  without  him,  and  still  he  continued  to  converse  with  the 
daughter  of  the  man  whom  he  held  as  his  worst  foe.  By  degrees, 
he  turned  the  conversation  into  a  channel  that  might  lead  him  to 
the  knowledge  he  sought. 

"  It  was  my  fate,"  said  he,  "once  to  become  acquainted  with 
an  intimate  friend  of  the  late  Mr.  Beaufort.  Will  you  pardon  me 
if  I  venture  to  fulfil  a  promise  I  made  to  him,  and  ask  you  to 
inform  me  what  has  become  of  a — a — that  is,  of  Sidney  Morton  ?" 

"  Sidney  Morton  !  I  don't  even  remember  the  name.  Oh, 
yes  !  I  have  heard  it,"  added  Camilla,  innocently,  and  with  a 
candor  that  showed  how  little  she  knew  of  the  secrets  of  the  fam- 
ily; "  he  was  one  of  two  poor  boys  in  whom  my  brother  felt  a 
deep  interest — some  relations  to  my  uncle.  Yes — yes  !  I  remem- 
ber now.  I  never  knew  Sidney,  but  I  once  did  see  his  brother." 

' '  Indeed  !  and  you  remember — ' ' 

"Yes  !  I  was  very  young  then.  I  scarcely  recollect  what  passed, 
it  was  all  so  confused  and  strange,  but  I  know  that  I  made  papa 
very  angry,  and  I  was  told  never  to  mention  the  name  of  Morton 
again.  I  believe  they  behaved  very  ill  to  papa." 


350  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

"  And  you  never  learned — never  ! — the  fate  of  either — of  Sid- 
ney?" 

"Never!  " 

"  But  your  father  must  know?  " 

"I  think  not;  but  tell  me,"  said  Camilla,  with  girlish  and 
unaffected  innocence,  "  I  have  always  felt  anxious  to  know, — 
what  and  who  were  those  poor  boys  ?  ' ' 

What  and  who  were  they  ?  So  deep,  then,  was  the  stain  upon 
their  name,  that  the  modest  mother  and  the  decorous  father  had 
never  even  said  to  that  young  girl:  "  They  are  your  cousins — 
the  children  of  the  man  in  whose  gold  we  revel !  " 

Philip  bit  his  lip,  and  the  spell  of  Camilla's  presence  seemed 
vanished.  He  muttered  some  inaudible  answer,  turned  away  to 
the  card-table,  and  Liancourt  took  the  chair  he  had  left  vacant. 

"  And  how  does  Miss  Beaufort  like  my  friend,  Vaudemont?  I 
assure  you  that  I  have  seldom  seen  him  so  alive  to  the  fascination 
of  female  beauty  ?  ' ' 

"Oh!"  said  Camilla,  with  her  silver  laugh,  "  your  nation 
spoils  us  for  our  own  countrymen.  You  forget  how  little  we  are 
accustomed  to  flattery." 

' '  Flattery  !  What  truth  could  flatter  on  the  lips  of  an  exile  ? 
But  you  don't  answer  my  question — what  think  you  of  Vaude- 
mont? Few  are  more  admired.  He  is  handsome  !  " 

"  Is  he  ?  "  said  Camilla,  and  she  glanced  at  Vaudemont,  as  he 
stood  at  a  little  distance,  thoughtful  and  abstracted.  Every  girl 
forms  to  herself  some  untold  dream  of  that  which  she  considers 
fairest.  And  Vaudemont  had  not  the  delicate  and  faultless  beauty 
of  Sidney.  There  was  nothing  that  corresponded  to  her  ideal  in 
his  marked  features  and  lordly  shape  !  But  she  owned,  reluct- 
antly to  herself,  that  she  had  seldom  seen,  among  the  trim  gal- 
lants of  everyday  life,  a  form  so  striking  and  impressive.  The 
air,  indeed,  was  professional;  the  most  careless  glance  could 
detect  the  soldier.  But  it  seemed  the  soldier  of  an  elder  age  or  a 
wilder  clime.  He  recalled  to  her  those  heads  which  she  had  seen 
in  the  Beaufort  Gallery  and  other  Collections  yet  more  celebrated 
— portraits  by  Titian  of  those  warrior  statesmen  who  lived  in  the 
old  Republics  of  Italy  in  a  perpetual  struggle  with  their  kind — 
images  of  dark,  resolute,  earnest  men.  Even  whatever  was  intel- 
lectual in  his  countenance  spoke,  as  in  those  portraits,  of  a  mind 
sharpened  rather  in  active  than  in  studious  life ;  intellectual,  not 
from  the  pale  hues,  the  worn  exhaustion,  and  the  sunken  cheek 
of  the  bookman  and  dreamer,  but  from  its  collected  and  stern 
repose,  the  calm  depth  that  lay  beneath  the  fire  of  the  eyes,  and 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  35! 

the  strong  will  that  spoke  in  the  close  full  lips,  and  the  high  but 
not  cloudless  forehead. 

And,  as  she  gazed,  Vaudemont  turned  round  ;  her  eyes  fell 
beneath  his,  and  she  felt  angry  with  herself  that  she  blushed. 
Vaudemont  saw  the  downcast  eye,  he  saw  the  blush,  and  the 
attraction  of  Camilla's  presence  was  restored.  He  would  have 
approached  her,  but  at  that  moment  Mr.  Beaufort  himself  entered, 
and  his  thoughts  went  again  into  a  darker  channel. 

"Yes,"  said  Liancourt,  "  you  must  allow  Vaudemont  looks 
what  he  is — a  noble  fellow  and  a  gallant  soldier.  Did  you  never 
hear  of  his  battle  with  the  tigress  ?  It  made  a  noise  in  India.  I 
must  tell  it  you  as  I  have  heard  it." 

And  while  Liancourt  was  narrating  the  adventure,  whatever  it 
was,  to  which  he  referred,  the  card-table  was  broken  up,  and 
Lord  Lilburne,  still  reclining  on  his  sofa,  lazily  introduced  his 
brother-in-law  to  such  of  the  guests  as  were  strangers  to  him — 
Vaudemont  among  the  rest.  Mr.  Beaufort  had  never  seen  Philip 
Morton  more  than  three  times ;  once  at  Fernside,  and  the  other 
times  by  an  imperfect  light,  and  when  his  features  were  convulsed 
by  passion,  and  his  form  disfigured  by  his  dress.  Certainly,  there- 
fore, had  Robert  Beaufort  even  possessed  that  faculty  of  memory 
which  is  supposed  to  belong  peculiarly  to  kings  and  princes,  and 
which  recals  every  face  once  seen,  it  might  have  tasked  the  gift  to 
the  utmost  to  have  detected,  in  the  bronzed  and  decorated  for- 
eigner to  whom  he  was  now  presented,  the  features  of  the  wild  and 
long-lost  boy.  But  still  some  dim  and  uneasy  presentiment,  or 
sonic  struggling  and  painful  effort  of  recollection,  was  in  his  mind, 
as  he  spoke  to  Vaudemont,  and  listened  to  the  cold,  calm  tone  of 
his  reply. 

"  Who  do  you  say  that  Frenchman  is?  "  he  whispered  to  his 
brother-in-law,  as  Vaudemont  turned  away. 

"  Oh  !  a  cleverish  sort  of  adventurer — a  gentleman;  he  plays. 
He  has  seen  a  good  deal  of  the  world.  He  rather  amuses  me — . 
different  from  other  people.  I  think  of  asking  him  to  join  our 
circle  at  Beaufort  Court." 

Mr.  Beaufort  coughed  huskily,  but  not  seeing  any  reasonable 
objection  to  the  proposal,  and  afraid  of  rousing  the  sleeping  hyena 
of  Lord  Lilburne's  sarcasm,  he  merely  said : 

"Any  one  you  like  to  invite:  "  and  looking  round  for  some 
one  on  whom  to  vent  his  displeasure,  perceived  Camilla  still  listen- 
ing to  Liancourt.  He  stalked  up  to  her,  and,  as  Liancourt,  see- 
ing her  rise,  rose  also  and  moved  away,  he  said  peevishly  :  "You 
will  never  learn  to  conduct  yourself  properly  ;  you  are  to  be  left 
here  to  nurse  and  comfort  your  uncle,  and  not  to  listen  to  the  gib- 


352  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

berish  of  every  French  adventurer.     Well,  Heaven  be  praised,  I 
have  a  son  !     Girls  are  a  great  plague  !  ' ' 

"So  they  are,  Mr.  Beaufort,"  sighed  his  wife,  who  had  just 
joined  him,  and  who  was  jealous  of  the  preference  Lilburne  had 
given  to  her  daughter. 

"  And  so  selfish,"  added  Mrs.  Beaufort;  "  they  only  care  for 
their  own  amusements,  and  never  mind  how  uncomfortable  their 
parents  are  for  want  of  them." 

"  Oh  !  dear  mamma,  don't  say  so;  let  me  go  home  with  you. 
I'll  speak  to  my  uncle." 

' '  Nonsense,  child !  Come  along,  Mr.  Beaufort ; ' '  and  the 
affectionate  parents  went  out  arm  in  arm.  They  did  not  perceive 
that  Vaudemont  had  been  standing  close  behind  them ;  but  Cam- 
illa, now  looking  up  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  again  caught  his  gaze  : 
he  had  heard  all. 

"And  they  ill-treat  her,"  he  muttered:  "  that  divides  her  from 
them  !  She  will  be  left  here — I  shall  see  her  again." 

As  he  turned  to  depart,  Lilburne  beckoned  to  him, 

"You  do  not  mean  to  desert  our  table ?  " 

"No;  but  I  am  not  very  well  to-night — to-morrow,  if  you  will 
allow  me." 

"  Ay,  to-morrow ;  and  if  you  can  spare  an  hour  in  the  morning 
it  will  be  a  charity.  You  see,"  he  added  in  a  whisper,  "  I  have 
a  nurse,  though  I  have  no  children.  D'ye  think  that's  love? 
Bah  !  sir — a  legacy  !  Good-night. ' ' 

"No — no — no!"  said  Vaudemont  to  himself,  as  he  walked 
through  the  moonlight  streets.  "No  !  though  my  heart  burns, — 
poor  murdered  felon  ! — to  avenge  thy  wrongs  and  thy  crimes, 
revenge  cannot  come  from  me — he  is  Fanny's  grandfather  and — 
Camilla's  uncle  /  " 

And  Camilla,  when  that  uncle  had  dismissed  her  for  the  night, 
sat  down  thoughtfully  in  her  own  room.  The  dark  eyes  of  Vau- 
demont seemed  still  to  shine  on  her ;  his  voice  yet  rung  in  her 
ear  ;  the  wild  tales  of  daring  and  danger  with  which  Liancourt 
had  associated  his  name  yet  haunted  her  bewildered  fancy — she 
started,  frightened  at  her  own  thoughts.  She  took  from  her 
bosom  some  lines  that  Sidney  had  addressed  to  her,  and,  as  she 
read  and  re-read,  her  spirit  became  calmed  to  its  wonted  and 
faithfu)  melancholy.  Vaudemont  was  forgotten,  and  the  name  of 
Sidney  yet  murmured  on  her  lips,  when  sleep  came  to  renew  the 
image  of  the  absent  one,  and  paint  in  dreams  the  fairy  land  of  a 
happy  Future  ! 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING,  353 

CHAPTER  VI. 

"  Ring  on,  ye  bells — most  pleasant  is  your  chime !  " 

WILSON  :  Isle  of  Palms. 
"  O  fairy  child  !     What  can  I  wish  for  thee  ?  " — Ibid. 

VAUDEMONT   remained   six  days  in  London  without  going  to 

H ,  and  each  of  those  days  he  paid  a  visit  to  Lord  Lilburne. 

On  the  seventh  day,  the  invalid  being  much  better,  though  still 
unable  to  leave  his  room,  Camilla  returned  to  Berkeley  Square. 
On  the  same  day,  Vaudemont  went  once  more  to  see  Simon  and 
poor  Fanny. 

As  he  approached  the  door,  he  heard  from  the  window,  par- 
tially opened,  for  the  day  was  clear  and  fine,  Fanny's  sweet  voice. 
She  was  chanting  one  of  the  simple  songs  she  had  promised  to 
learn  by  heart ;  and  Vaudemont,  though  but  a  poor  judge  of  the 
art,  was  struck  and  affected  by  the  music  of  the  voice  and  the 
earnest  depth  of  the  feeling.  He  paused  opposite  the  window 
and  called  her  by  her  name.  Fanny  looked  forth  joyously,  and 
ran,  as  usual,  to  open  the  door  to  him. 

"  Oh  !  you  have  been  so  long  away;  but  I  already  know  many 
of  the  songs :  they  say  so  much  that  I  always  wanted  to  say  !  " 

Vaudemont  smiled,  but  languidly. 

"How  strange  it  is,"  said  Fanny,  musingly,  "that  there 
should  be  so  much  in  a  piece  of  paper  !  for,  after  all,"  pointing 
to  the  open  page  of  her  book,  "this  is  but  a  piece  of  paper, — 
only  there  is  life  in  it!  " 

"Ay,"  said  Vaudemont,  gloomily,  and  far  from  seizing  the 
subtle  delicacy  of  Fanny's  thought — her  mind  dwelling  upon  Poe- 
try and  his  upon  Law, — "  ay,  and  do  you  know  that  upon  a  mere 
scrap  of  paper,  if  I  could  but  find  it,  may  depend  my  whole  for- 
tune, my  whole  happiness,  all  that  I  care  for  in  life  ?  " 

' '  Upon  a  scrap  of  paper  ?  Oh  !  how  I  wish  I  could  find  it  ? 
Ah  !  you  look  as  if  you  thought  I  should  never  be  wise  enough  for 
that !  " 

Vaudemont,  not  listening  to  her,  uttered  a  deep  sigh.  Fanny 
approached  him  timidly. 

"Do  not  sigh,  brother  ;  I  can't  bear  to  hear  you  sigh.  You  are 
changed.  Have_y0#,  too,  not  been  happy?  " 

"  Happy,  Fanny  !  yes,  lately  very  happy — too  happy  !  " 

"  Happy,  have  you  ?  and  7  " — the  girl  stopped  short ;  her  tone 
had   been   that  of  sadness  and  reproach,  and  she  stopped — why 
she  knew  not,  but  she  felt  her  heart  sink  within  her.     Fanny  suf- 
fered   him  to  pass  her,  and  he  went  straight  to  his  own  room. 
33 


354  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

Her  eyes  followed  him  wistfully  :  it  was  not  his  habit  to  leave  her 
thus  abruptly.  The  family  meal  of  the  day  was  over  ;  and  it  was 
an  hour  before  Vaudemont  descended  to  the  parlor.  Fanny  had 
put  aside  the  songs ;  she  had  no  heart  to  recommence  those  gen- 
tle studies  that  had  been  so  sweet, — they  had  drawn  no  pleasure, 
no  praise  from  him.  She  was  seated  idly  and  listlessly  beside  the 
silent  old  man,  who  every  day  grew  more  and  more  silent  still. 
She  turned  her  head  as  Vaudemont  entered,  and  her  pretty  lip 
pouted  as  that  of  a  neglected  child.  But  he  did  not  heed  it, 
and  the  pout  vanished,  and  tears  rushed  to  her  eyes. 

Vaudemont  was  changed.  His  countenance  was  thoughtful 
and  overcast.  His  manner  abstracted.  He  addressed  a  few 
words  to  Simon,  and  then,  seating  himself  by  the  window,  leant 
his  cheek  on  his  hand,  and  was  soon  lost  in  reverie.  Fanny, 
finding  that  he  did  not  speak,  and  after  stealing  many  a  long  and 
earnest  glance  at  his  motionless  attitude  and  gloomy  brow,  rose 
gently,  and  gliding  to  him  with  her  light  step,  said  in  a  trem- 
bling voice : 

"  Are  you  in  pain,  brother  ?  " 

"  No,  pretty  one  !  " 

"Then  why  won't  you  speak  to  Fanny?  Will  you  not  walk 
with  her  ?  Perhaps  my  grandfather  will  come  too." 

"  Not  this  evening.     I  shall  go  out;  but  it  will  be  alone." 

"Where?  Has  not  Fanny  been  good?  I  have  not  been  out 
since  you  left  us.  And  the  grave — brother  !  I  sent  Sarah  with 
the  flowers — but — " 

Vaudemont  rose  abruptly.  The  mention  of  the  grave  brought 
back  his  thoughts  from  the  dreaming  channel  into  which  they 
had  flowed.  Fanny,  whose  very  childishness  had  once  so  soothed 
him,  now  disturbed  ;  he  felt  the  want  of  that  complete  solitude 
which  makes  the  atmosphere  of  growing  passion :  he  muttered 
some  scarcely  audible  excuse,  and  quitted  the  house.  Fanny  saw 
him  no  more  that  evening.  He  did  not  return  till  midnight. 
But  Fanny  did  not  sleep  till  she  heard  his  step  on  the  stairs,  and 
his  chamber-door  close  :  and  when  she  did  sleep,  her  dreams 
were  disturbed  and  painful.  The  next  morning,  when  they  met 
at  breakfast  (for  Vaudemont  did  not  return  to  London),  her  eyes 
were  red  and  heavy,  and  her  cheek  pale.  And,  still  buried  in 
meditation,  Vaudemont's  eye  usually  so  kind  and  watchful,  did  not 
detect  those  signs  of  a  grief  that  Fanny  could  not  have  explained. 
After  breakfast,  however,  he  asked  her  to  walk  out ;  and  her  face 
brightened  as  she  hastened  to  put  on  her  bonnet,  and  take  her 
little  basket,  full  of  fresh  flowers  which  she  had  already  sent 
•Sarah  forth  to  purchase. 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  355 

"Fanny,"  said  Vaudemont,  as  leaving  the  house,  he  saw  the 
basket  on  her  arm,  "  to-day  you  may  place  some  of  those  flowers 
on  another  tombstone  !  Poor  child,  what  natural  goodness  there 
is  in  that  heart  !  What  pity  that— 

He  paused.     Fanny  looked  delightedly  in  his  face. 

"You  were  praising  me — you .'  And  what  is  a  pity,  brother?  " 

While  she  spoke,  the  sound  of  the  joy-bells  was  heard  near  at 
hand. 

"Hark!"  said  Vaudemont,  forgetting  her  question — and 
almost  gaily.  "Hark!  I  accept  the  omen.  It  is  a  marriage 
peal !  " 

He  quickened  his  steps,  and  they  reached  the  churchyard. 

There  was  a  crowd  already  assembled,  and  Vaudemont  and 
Fanny  paused  ;  and,  leaning  over  the  little  gate,  looked  on. 

"Why  are  these  people  here,  and  why  does  the  bell  ring  so 
merrily?" 

"There  is  to  be  a  wedding,  Fanny." 

"  I  have  heard  of  a  wedding  very  often,"  said  Fanny,  with  a 
pretty  look  of  puzzlement  and  doubt,  "  but  I  don't  know  exactly 
what  it  means.  Will  you  tell  me?  And  the  bells,  too!" 

' '  Yes,  Fanny,  those  bells  toll  but  three  times  for  man  !  The 
first  time,  when  he  comes  into  the  world ;  the  last  time,  when  he 
leaves  it;  the  time  between,  when  he  takes  to  his  side  a  partner 
in  all  the  sorrows,  in  all  the  joys  that  yet  remain  to  him;  and 
who,  even  when  the  last  bell  announces  his  death  to  this  earth, 
may  yet,  forever  and  ever,  be  his  partner  in  that  world  to  come — 
that  Heaven,  where  they  who  are  as  innocent  as  you,  Fanny, 
may  hope  to  live  and  to  love  each  other  in  a  land  in  which  there 
are  no  graves  !  " 

"  And  this  bell?" 

"  Tolls  for  that  partnership — for  the  wedding  !  " 

"I  think  1  understand  you;  and  they  who  are  to  be  wed  are 
happy?  " 

' '  Happy,  Fanny,  if  they  love,  and  their  love  continue.  Oh  ! 
conceive  the  happiness  to  know  some  one  person  dearer  to  you 
than  your  own  self;  some  one  breast  into  which  you  can  pour 
every  thought,  every  grief,  every  joy  !  One  person,  who,  if  all 
the  rest  of  the  world  were  to  calumniate  or  forsake  you,  would 
never  wrong  you  by  a  harsh  thought  or  an  unjust  word ;  who 
would  cling  to  you  the  closer  in  sickness,  in  poverty,  in  care ; 
who  would  sacrifice  all  things  to  you,  and  for  whom  you  would 
sacrifice  all ;  from  whom,  except  by  death,  night  or  day,  you 
may  be  never  divided ;  whose  smile  is  ever  at  your  hearth ;  who 
has  no  tears  while  you  are  well  and  happy,  and  your  love  the 


356  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

:;ame.  Fanny,  such  is  marriage,  if  they  who  marry  have  hearts 
and  souls  to  feel  that  there  is  no  bond  on  earth  so  tender  and  so 
sublime.  There  is  an  opposite  picture; — I  will  not  draw  that ! 
And  as  it  is,  Fanny,  you  cannot  understand  me  !  " 

He  turned  away — and  Fanny's  tears  were  falling  like  rain  upon 
the  grass  below ;  he  did  not  see  them  !  He  entered  the  church- 
yard, for  the  bell  now  ceased.  The  ceremony  was  to  begin.  He 
followed  the  bridal  party  into  the  church,  and  Fanny,  lowering 
her  veil,  crept  after  him,  awed  and  trembling. 

They  stood,  unobserved,  at  a  little  distance,  and  heard  the  ser- 
vice. 

The  betrothed  were  of  the  middle  class  of  life,  young,  both 
comely ;  and  their  behavior  was  such  as  suited  the  reverence  and 
sanctity  of  the  rite.  Vaudemont  stood,  looking  on  intently,  with 
his  arms  folded  on  his  breast.  Fanny  leant  behind  him,  and 
apart  from  all,  against  one  of  the  pews.  And  still  in  her  hand, 
while  the  priest  was  solemnizing  Marriage,  she  held  the  flowers 
intended  for  the  Grave.  Even  to  that  MORNING — hushed,  calm, 
earnest,  with  her  mysterious  and  unconjectured  heart — her  shape 
brought  a  thought  of  NIGHT  ! 

When  the  ceremony  was  over;  when  the  bride  fell  on  her 
mother's  breast,  and  wept;  and  then,  when  turning  thence,  her 
eyes  met  the  bridegroom's,  and  the  tears  were  all  smiled  away ; 
when,  in  that  one  rapid  interchange  of  looks,  spoke  all  that  holy 
love  can  speak  to  love,  and  with  timid  frankness  she  placed  her 
hand  in  his  to  whom  she  had  just  vowed  her  life, — a  thrill  went 
through  the  hearts  of  those  present.  Vaudemont  sighed  heavily. 
He  heard  his  sigh  echoed ;  but  by  one  that  had  in  its  sound  no 
breath  of  pain ;  he  turned  ;  Fanny  had  raised  her  veil;  her  eyes 
met  his,  moistened,  but  bright,  soft,  and  her  cheeks  were  rosy- 
red.  Vaudemont  recoiled  before  that  gaze,  and  turned  from  the 
church.  The  persons  interested  retired  to  the  vestry  to  sign  their 
names  in  the  registry ;  the  crowd  dispersed,  and  Vaudemont  and 
Fanny  stood  alone  in  the  burial-ground. 

"Look,  Fanny,"  said  the  former,  pointing  to  a  tomb  that 
stood  far  from  his  mother's  (for  those  ashes  were  too  hallowed  for 
such  a  neighborhood).  "Look  yonder;  it  is  a  new  tomb, 
Fanny;  let  us  approach  it.  Can  you  read  what  is  there 
inscribed?" 

The  inscription  was  simply  this, — 

To  W— G-- 
MAN SEES  THE  NEED — 
GOD  THE  CIRCUMSTANCE. 

,  THAT  YE  BE  NOT  J  VPfiSft 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  35  y 

"  Fanny,  this  tomb  fulfils  your  pious  wish :  it  is  to  the  memory 
of  him  whom  you  called  your  father.  Whatever  was  his  life  here ; 
whatever  sentence  it  hath  received,  Heaven,  at  least,  will  not  con- 
demn your  piety,  if  you  honor  one  who  was  good  to  you,  and 
place  flowers,  however  idle,  even  over  that  grave." 

"  It  is  his — my  father's — and  you  have  thoughtof  this  forme  !  " 
said  Fanny,  taking  his  hand,  and  sobbing.  "And  I  have  been 
thinking  that  you  were  not  so  kind  to  me  as  you  were  !  " 

"Have  I  not  been  so  kind  to  you?  Nay,  forgive  me,  I  am 
not  happy." 

"  Not  ?     You  said  yesterday  you  had  been  too  happy." 

"  To  remember  happiness  is  not  to  be  happy,  Fanny." 

"  That's  true — and — " 

Fanny  stopped ;  and,  as  she  bent  over  the  tomb,  musing,  Vau- 
demont,  willing  to  leave  her  undisturbed,  and  feeling  bitterly  how 
little  his  conscience  could  vindicate,  though  it  might  find  pallia- 
tion for,  the  dark  man  who  slept  not  there — retired  a  few  paces. 

At  this  time  the  new-married  pair,  with  their  witnesses,  the 
clergyman,  etc.,  came  from  the  vestry,  and  crossed  the  path. 
Fanny  as  she  turned  from  the  tomb,  saw  them,  and  stood  still, 
looking  earnestly  at  the  bride. 

"  What  a  lovely  face !  "  said  the  mother.  "Is  it — yes,  it  is — 
the  poor  idiot  girl." 

"  Ah !  "  said  the  bridegroom,  tenderly,  "  and  she,  Mary, 
beautiful  as  she  is,  she  can  never  make  another  as  happy  as  you 
have  made  me." 

Vaudemont  heard,  and  his  heart  felt  sad.  "  Poor  Fanny  ! 
And  yet,  but  for  that  affliction,  /might  have  loved  her,  ere  I  met 
the  fatal  face  of  the  daughter  of  my  foe  !  "  And  with  a  deep 
compassion,  an  inexpressible  and  holy  fondness,  he  moved  to 
Fanny. 

"Come,  my  child ;  now  let  us  go  home." 

"Stay,"  said  Fanny,  "you  forget."  And  she  went  to  strew 
the  flowers,  still  left,  over  Catherine's  grave. 

"Will  my  mother,"  thought  Vaudemont,  "forgive  me,  if  I 
have  other  thoughts  than  hate  and  vengeance  for  that  house  which 
builds  its  greatness  over  her  slandered  name?"  He  groaned  and 
that  grave  had  lost  its  melancholy  charm. 


358  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

"  Of  all  men,  I  say, 

That  dare,  for  'tis  a  desperate  adventure, 
Wear  on  their  free  necks  the  yoke  of  women, 
Give  me  a  soldier." — Knight  of  Malta. 

"  So  lightly  doth  this  little  boat 
Upon  the  scarce-touch'd  billows  float ; 
So  careless  doth  she  seem  to  be, 
Thus  left  by  herself  on  the  homeless  sea, 
To  lie  there  with  her  cheerful  sail, 
Till  heaven  shall  send  some  gracious  gale." 

— WILSON.  Isle  of  Palms. 

VAUDEMONT  returned  that  evening  to  London,  and  found  at  his 
lodgings  a  note  from  Lord  Lilburne,  stating  that  as  his  gout  was 
now  somewhat  mitigated,  his  physician  had  recommended  him  to 
try  change  of  air — that  Beaufort  Court  was  in  one  of  the  western 
counties,  in  a  genial  climate — that  he  was  therefore  going  thither 
the  next  day  for  a  short  time — that  he  had  asked  some  of  Monsieur 
de  Vaudemont's  countrymen,  and  a  few  other  friends,  to  enliven 
the  circle  of  a  dull  country-house — that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Beaufort 
would  be  delighted  to  see  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont  also — and  that 
his  compliance  with  their  invitation  would  be  a  charity  to  Mon- 
sieur de  Vaudemont's  faithful  and  obliged, 

LILBURNE. 

The  first  sensation  of  Vaudemont  on  reading  this  effusion  was 
delight.  "I  shall  see  her"  he  cried;  "I  shall  be  under  the 
same  roof!  "  But  the  glow  faded  at  once  from  his  cheek.  The 
roof !  What  roof?  Be  the  guest  where  he  held  himself  the  lord  ! 
He  the  guest  of  Robert  Beaufort !  Was  that  all  ?  Did  he  not 
meditate  the  deadliest  war  which  civilized  life  admits  of — the 
War  of  Law — war  for  name,  property,  that  very  hearth,  with  all 
its  household  gods,  against  this  man — could  he  receive  his  hospi- 
tality? "And  what  then  !  "  he  exclaimed,  as  he  paced  to  and 
fro  the  rooms ;  ' '  because  her  father  wronged  me,  and  because  I 
would  claim  mine  own,  must  I  therefore  exclude  from  my  thoughts, 
from  my  sight,  an  image  so  fair  and  gentle ;  the  one  who  knelt  by 
my  side,  an  infant,  to  that  hard  man  ?  Is  Hate  so  noble  a  passion 
that  it  is  not  to  admit  one  glimpse  of  Love  ?  Love  !  what  word  is 
that?  Let  me  beware  in  time  !  "  He  paused  in  fierce  self-con- 
test, and,  throwing  open  the  window,  gasped  for  air.  The  street 
in  which  he  lodged  was  situated  in  the  neighborhood  of  St. 
James's;  and,  at  that  very  moment,  as  if  to  defeat  all  opposition, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  359 

and  to  close  the  struggle,  Mrs.  Beaufort's  barouche  drove  by, 
Camilla  at  her  side.  Mrs.  Beaufort,  glancing  up,  languidly 
bowed  ;  and  Camilla  herself  perceived  him,  and  he  saw  her 
change  color  as  she  inclined  her  head.  He  gazed  after  them 
almost  breathless,  till  the  carriage  disappeared  ;  and  then,  reclos- 
ing  the  window,  he  sat  down  to  collect  his  thoughts,  and  again  to 
reason  with  himself.  But  still,  as  he  reasoned,  he  saw  ever  before 
him  that  blush  and  that  smile.  At  last  he  sprang  up,  and  a  noble 
and  bright  expression  elevated  the  character  of  his  face :  "  Yes,  if 
I  enter  that  house,  if  I  eat  that  man's  bread,  and  drink  of  his  cup, 
I  must  forego,  not  justice — not  what  is  due  to  my  mother's  name 
— but  whatever  belongs  to  hate  and  vengeance.  If  I  enter  that 
house,  and  if  Providence  permit  me  the  means  whereby  to  regain 
my  rights,  why,  she — the  innocent  one — y^may  be  the  means  of 
saving  her  father  from  ruin,  and  stand  like  an  angel  by  that 
boundary  where  justice  runs  into  revenge !  Besides,  is  it  not  my 
duty  to  discover  Sidney?  Here  is  the  only  clue  I  shall  obtain." 
With  these  thoughts  he  hesitated  no  more — he  decided  :  he  would 
not  reject  this  hospitality,  since  it  might  be  in  his  power  to  pay 
it  back  ten  thousand -fold.  "And  who  knows,"  he  murmured 
again,  "if  Heaven,  in  throwing  this  sweet  being  in  my  way, 
might  not  have  designed  to  subdue  and  chasten  in  me  the  angry 
passions  I  have  so  long  fed  on  ?  I  have  seen  her, — can  I  now 
hate  her  father?" 

He  sent  off  his  note  accepting  the  invitation.  When  he  had 
done  so,  was  he  satisfied?  He  had  taken  as  noble  and  as  large  a 
view  of  the  duties  thereby  imposed  on  him  as  he  well  could  take ; 
but  something  whispered  at  his  heart:  "There  is  weakness  in 
thy  generosity.  Barest  thou  love  the  daughter  of  Robert  Beau- 
fort? "  And  his  heart  had  no  answer  to  this  voice. 

The  rapidity  with  which  love  is  ripened  depends  less  upon  the 
actual  number  of  years  that  have  passed  over  the  soil  in  which 
the  seed  is  cast,  than  upon  the  freshness  of  the  soil  itself.  A 
young  man  who  lives  the  ordinary  life  of  the  world,  and  who  frit- 
ters away,  rather  than  exhausts,  his  feelings,  upon  a  variety  of 
quick  succeeding  subjects — the  Cynthias  of  the  minute — is  not 
apt  to  form  a  real  passion  at  the  first  sight.  Youth  is  inflammable 
only  when  the  heart  is  young  ! 

There  are  certain  times  of  life  when,  in  either  sex,  the  affec- 
tions are  prepared,  as  it  were,  to  be  impressed  with  the  first  fair 
face  that  attracts  the  fancy  and  delights  the  eye.  Such  times  are 
when  the  heart  has  been  long  solitary,  and  when  some  interval  of 
idleness  and  rest  succeeds  to  periods  of  harsher  and  more  turbu- 
lent excitement.  It  was  precisely  such  a  period  in  the  life  of 


360  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

Vaudemont.  Although  his  ambition  had  been  for  many  years  his 
dream,  and  his  sword  his  mistress,  yet  naturally  affectionate,  and 
susceptible  of  strong  emotion,  he  had  often  repined  at  his  lonely 
lot.  By  degrees,  the  boy's  fantasy  and  reverence  which  had 
wound  themselves  round  the  image  of  Eugenie,  subsided  into  that 
gentle  and  tender  melancholy  which,  perhaps,  by  weakening  the 
strength  of  the  sterner  thoughts,  leaves  us  inclined,  rather  to 
receive,  than  to  resist,  a  new  attachment ;  and  on  the  verge  of  the 
sweet  Memory  trembles  the  sweet  Hope.  The  suspension  of  his 
profession,  his  schemes,  his  struggles,  his  career  left  his  passions 
unemployed.  Vaudemont  was  thus  unconsciously  prepared  to 
love.  As  we  have  seen,  his  first  and  earliest  feelings  directed 
themselves  to  Fanny.  But  he  had  so  immediately  detected  the 
danger,  and  so  immediately  recoiled  from  nursing  those  thoughts 
and  fancies,  without  which  love  dies  for  want  of  food,  for  a  per- 
son to  whom  he  ascribed  the  affliction  of  an  imbecility  which 
would  give  to  such  a  sentiment  all  the  attributes  either  of  the  weak- 
est rashness  or  of  dishonor  approaching  to  sacrilege — that  the 
wings  of  the  Deity  were  scared  away  the  instant  their  very  shadow 
fell  upon  his  mind.  And  thus,  when  Camilla  rose  upon  him,  his 
heart  was  free  to  receive  her  image.  Her  graces,  her  accomplish- 
ments, a  certain  nameless  charm  that  invested  her,  pleased  him 
even  more  than  her  beauty ;  the  recollections  connected  with  that 
first  time  in  which  he  had  ever  beheld  her,  were  also  grateful  and 
endearing ;  the  harshness  with  which  her  parents  spoke  to  her, 
moved  his  compassion,  and  addressed  itself  to  a  temper  peculiarly 
alive  to  the  generosity  that  leans  towards  the  weak  and  the 
wronged;  the  engaging  mixture  of  mildness  and  gaiety  with 
which  she  tended  her  peevish  and  sneering  uncle,  convinced  him 
of  her  better  and  more  enduring  qualities  of  disposition  and 
womanly  heart.  And  even — so  strange  and  contradictory  are  our 
feelings — the  very  remembrance  that  she  was  connected  with  a 
family  so  hateful  to  him  made  her  own  image  the  more  bright 
from  the  darkness  that  surrounded  it.  For  was  it  not  with  the 
daughter  of  his  foe  that  the  lover  of  Verona  fell  in  love  at  first 
sight?  And  is  not  that  a  common  type  of  us  all — as  if  Passion 
delighted  in  contradictions  ?  As  the  Diver,  in  Schiller's  exquisite 
ballad,  fastened  upon  the  rock  of  coral  in  the  midst  of  the  gloomy 
sea,  so  we  cling  the  more  gratefully  to  whatever  of  fair  thought 
and  gentle  shelter  smiles  out  to  us  in  the  depths  of  Hate  and 
Strife. 

But,  perhaps,  Vaudemont  would  not  so  suddenly  and  so  utterly 
have  rendered  himself  to  a  passion  that  began,  already,  com- 
pletely to  master  his  strong  spirit,  if  he  had  not,  from  Camilla's 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  361 

embarrassment,  her  timidity,  her  blushes,  intoxicated  himself 
with  the  belief  that  his  feelings  were  not  unshared.  And  who 
knows  not  that  such  a  belief,  once  cherished,  ripens  our  own  love 
to  a  development  in  which  hours  are  as  years  ? 

It  was,  then,  with  such  emotions  as  made  him  almost  insensible 
to  every  thought  but  the  luxury  of  breathing  the  same  air  as  his 
cousin,  which  swept  from  his  mind  the  Past,. the  Future — leaving 
nothing  but  a  joyous,  a  breathless  PRESENT  on  the  Face  of  Time, 
that  he  repaired  to  Beaufort  Court.  He  did  not  return  to  H — 
before  he  went,  but  he  wrote  to  Fanny  a  short  and  hurried  line  to 
explain  that  he  might  be  absent  for  some  days  at  least,  and  prom- 
ised to  write  again,  if  he  should  be  detained  longer  than  he  antic- 
ipated. 

In  the  meanwhile,  one  of  those  successive  revolutions  which  had 
marked  the  eras  in  Fanny's  moral  existence,  took  its  date  from 
that  last  time  they  had  walked  and  conversed  together. 

The  very  evening  of  that  day,  some  hours  after  Philip  was  gone, 
and  after  Simon  had  retired  to  rest,  Fanny  was  sitting  before  the 
dying  fire  in  the  little  parlor  in  an  attitude  of  deep  and  pensive 
reverie.  The  old  woman-servant,  Sarah,  who,  very  different  from 
Mrs.  Boxer,  loved  Fanny  with  her  whole  heart,  came  into  the 
room,  as  was  her  wont  before  going  to  bed,  to  see  that  the  fire 
was  duly  out,  and  all  safe:  and  as  she  approached  the  hearth,  she 
started  to  see  Fanny  still  up. 

"  Dear  heart  alive  !  "  she  said ;  "  why,  Miss  Fanny,  you  will 
catch  your  death  of  cold, — what  are  you  thinking  about?" 

"Sit  down,  Sarah;  I  want  to  speak  to  you."  Now,  though 
Fanny  was  exceedingly  kind,  and  attached  to  Sarah,  she  was  sel- 
dom communicative  to  her,  or  indeed  to  any  one.  It  was  usually 
in  its  own  silence  and  darkness  that  that  lovely  mind  worked  out 
its  own  doubts. 

"  Do  you,  my  sweet  young  lady  ?  I'm  sure  anything  I  can  do — " 
and  Sarah  seated  herself  in  her  master's  great  chair,  and  drew 
it  close  to  Fanny.  There  was  no  light  in  the  room  but  the  expir- 
ing fire,  and  it  threw  upward  a  pale  glimmer  on  the  two  faces 
bending  over  it, — the  one  so  strangely  beautiful,  so  smooth,  so 
blooming,  so  exquisite  in  its  youth  and  innocence;  the  other  with- 
ered, wrinkled,  meagre,  and  astute.  It  was  like  the  Fairy  and 
the  Witch  together. 

"Well,  miss,"  said  the  crone,  observing  that,  after  a  consid- 
erable pause,  Fanny  was  still  silent;  "  Well — " 

"  Sarah,  I  have  seen  a  wedding  !  " 

"Have  you?"  and  the  old  woman  laughed.     "Oh!  I  heard 


362  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

it  was  to  be  to-day  !  young  Waldron's  wedding !  Yes,  they  have 
been  long  sweethearts." 

"Were  you  ever  married,  Sarah ? " 

"  Lord  bless  you, — yes  !  And  a  very  good  husband  I  had,  poor 
man  !  But  he's  dead  these  many  years ;  and  if  you  had  not  taken 
me,  I  must  have  gone  to  the  workhus." 

•'  He  is  dead  !  Wasn't  it  very  hard  to  live  after  that,  Sarah  ?  " 

"The  Lord  strengthens  the  hearts  of  widders !  "  observed 
Sarah,  sanctimoniously. 

"Did  you  marry  your  brother,  Sarah?"  said  Fanny,  playing 
with  the  corner  of  her  apron. 

"My  brother!"  exclaimed  the  old  woman,  aghast.  "La! 
miss,  you  must  not  talk  in  that  way, — it's  quite  wicked  and 
heathenish  !  One  must  not  marry  one's  brother  !  " 

"No  !  "  said  Fanny,  tremblingly  and  turning  very  pale,  even 
by  that  light.  "  No  !  Are  you  sure  of  that  ?  " 

"It  is  the  wickedest  thing  even  to  talk  about,  my  dear  young 
mistress ; — but  you're  like  a  babby  unborn  !  " 

Fanny  was  silent  for  some  moments.  At  length  she  said,  un- 
conscious that  she  was  speaking  aloud,  "  But  he  is  #0/my  brother, 
after  all !  " 

"Oh,  miss,  fie  !  Are  you  letting  your  pretty  head  run  on  the 
handsome  gentleman  ?  You,  too, — dear,  dear  !  I  see  we're  all 
alike,  we  poor  femel  creturs  !  You  !  who'd  have  thought  it?  Oh, 
Miss  Fanny !  you'll  break  your  heart  if  you  goes  for  to  fancy  any 
such  thing." 

"Any  what  thing?  " 

"Why,  that  that  gentleman  will  marry  you!  I'm  sure,  thof 
he's  so  simple  like,  he's  some  great  gentleman  !  They  say  his  hoss 
is  worth  a  hundred  pounds  !  Dear,  dear !  why  didn't  I  ever  think 
of  this  before  ?  He  must  be  a  very  wicked  man.  I  see,  now, 
why  he  comes  here.  I'll  speak  to  him,  that  I  will !  A  very 
wicked  man  !  " 

Sarah  was  startled  from  her  indignation  by  Fanny's  rising  sud- 
denly, and  standing  before  her  in  the  flickering  twilight,  almost 
like  a  shape  transformed, — so  tall  did  she  seem,  so  stately,  so 
dignified. 

"Is  it  of  him  that  you  are  speaking? "  said  she,  in  a  voice  of 
calm  but  deep  resentment—"  of  him !  If  so,  Sarah,  we  two  can 
live  no  more  in  the  same  house." 

And  these  words  were  said  with  a  propriety  and  collectedness 
that  even,  through  all  her  terror,  showed  at  once  to  Sarah  how 
much  they  now  wronged  Fanny  who  had  suffered  their  lips  to 
repeat  the  parrot-cry  of  the  "idiot  girl  !  " 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  363 

"  O  !  gracious  me  ! — miss — ma'am — I  am  so  sorry — I'd  rather 
bite  out  my  tongue  than  say  a  word  to  offend  you  ;  it  was  only 
my  love  for  you,  dear  innocent  creature  that  you  are!  "  and  the 
honest  woman  sobbed  with  real  passion  as  she  clasped  Fanny's 
hand.  "There  have  been  so  many  young  persons,  good  and 
harmless,  yes,  even  as  you  are,  ruined.  But  you  don't  understand 
me.  Miss  Fanny  !  hear  me  ;  I  must  try  and  say  what  I  would 
say.  That  man,  that  gentleman — so  proud,  so  well-dressed,  so 
grand-like,  will  never  marry  yoti — never — never.  And  if  ever  he 
says  he  does  love  you,  and  you  say  you  loves  him,  and  you  two 
don't  marry,  you  will  be  ruined  and  wicked,  and  die — die  of  a 
broken  heart !  " 

The  earnestness  of  Sarah's  manner  subdued  and  almost  awed 
Fanny.  She  sunk  down  again  in  her  chair  and  suffered  the  old 
woman  to  caress  and  weep  over  her  hand  for  some  moments,  in  a 
silence  that  concealed  the  darkest  and  most  agitated  feelings  Fan- 
ny's life  had  hitherto  known.  At  length,  she  said  : 

"Why  will  he  not  marry  me  if  he  loves  me?  He  is  not  my 
brother, — indeed  he  is  not !  I'll  never  call  him  so  again." 

"  He  cannot  marry  you,"  said  Sarah,  resolved,  with  a  sort  of 
rude  nobleness,  to  persevere  in  what  she  felt  to  be  a  duty ;  "I 
don't  say  anything  about  money,  because  that  does  not  always 
signify.  But  he  cannot  marry  you,  because — because  people  who 
are  hedicated  one  way  never  marry  thCse  who  are  are  hedicated 
and  brought  up  in  another.  A  gentleman  of  that  kind  requires  a 
wife  to  know — oh — to  know  ever  so  much;  and  you — " 

"Sarah,"  interrupted  Fanny,  rising  again,  but  this  time  with  a 
smile  on  her  face,  "don't  say  anything  more  about  it;  I  forgive 
you,  if  you  promise  never  to  speak  unkindly  of  him  again — never 
— never — never,  Sarah  !  " 

"  But  may  I  just  tell  him  that — that — " 

"That  what?" 

"That  you  are  so  young  and  innocent,  and  has  no  pertector 
like ;  and  that  if  you  were  to  love  him  it  would  be  a  shame  in  him 
— that  it  would  !  " 

And  then  (  oh !  no,  Fanny,  there  was  nothing  clouded  now  in 
your  reason  !) — and  then  the  woman's  alarm,  the  modesty,  the 
instinct,  the  terror  came  upon  her. 

"Never!  never!  I  will  not  love  him, — I  do  not  love  him, 
indeed,  Sarah.  If  you  speak  to  him,  I  will  never  look  you  in  the 
face  again.  It  is  all  past — all,  dear  Sarah  !  " 

She  kissed  the  old  woman ;  and  Sarah,  fancying  that  her  saga- 
city and  counsel  had  prevailed,  promised  all  she  was  asked  ;  so 
they  went  up-stairs  together — friends, 


364  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

"  As  the  wind 

Sobs,  an  uncertain  sweetness  comes  from  out 
The  orange-trees. 

*  *  #  #  * 

Rise  up,  Olympia. — She  sleeps  soundly.     Ho ! 
Stirring  at  last."  BARRY  CORNWALL. 

THE  next  day,  Fanny  was  seen  by  Sarah  counting  the  little 
hoard  that  she  had  so  long  and  so  painfully  saved  for  her  benefactor's 
tomb.  The  money  was  no  longer  wanted  for  Mdtf  object.  Fanny 
had  found  another;  she  said  nothing  to  Sarah  or  to  Simon.  But 
there  was  a  strange  complacent  smile  upon  her  lip  as  she  busied 
herself  in  her  work,  that  puzzled  the  old  woman.  Late  at  noon 
came  the  postman's  unwonted  knock  at  the  door.  A  letter  !  A 
letter  for  Miss  Fanny.  A  letter  !  The  first  she  had  ever  received 
in  her  life  !  And  it  was  from  him  ! — and  it  began  with  "  Dear 
Fanny/'  Vaudemont  had  called  her  "clear  Fanny  "  a  hundred 
times,  and  the  expression  had  become  a  matter  of  course.  But 
"Dear  Fanny"  seemed  so  very  different  when  it  was  written. 
The  letter  could  not  well  be  shorter,  nor,  all  things  considered, 
colder.  But  the  girl  found  no  fault  with  it.  It  began  with  "  Dear 
Fanny,"  and  it  ended  with  "  yours  truly."  "Yours  truly — mine 
truly — and  how  kind  to  write  at  all !  "  Now  it  so  happened  that 
Vaudemont,  having  never  merged  the  art  of  the  penman  into  that 
rapid  scrawl  into  which  people,  who  are  compelled  to  write  hur- 
riedly and  constantly,  degenerate,  wrote  a  remarkably  good  hand, 
— bold,  clear,  symmetrical — almost  too  good  a  hand  for  one  who 
was  not  to  make  money  by  caligraphy.  And  after  Fanny  got  the 
words  by  heart,  she  stole  gently  to  a  cupboard  and  took  forth  some 
specimens  of  her  own  hand,  in  the  shape  of  house  and  work 
memoranda,  and  extracts  which,  the  better  to  help  her  memor) , 
she  had  made  from  the  poem-book  Vaudemont  had  given  her. 
She  gravely  laid  his  letter  by  the  side  of  these  specimens,  and 
blushed  at  the  contrast;  yet,  after  all,  her  own  writing,  though 
trembling  and  irresolute,  was  far  from  a  bad  or  vulgar  hand. 
But  emulation  was  now  fairly  roused  within  her.  Vaudemont, 
preoccupied  by  more  engrossing  thoughts,  and,  indeed,  forgetting 
a  danger  that  had  seemed  so  thoroughly  to  have  passed  away,  did 
not  in  his  letter  caution  Fanny  against  going  out  alone.  She 
remarked  this ;  and  having  completely  recovered  her  own  alarm 
at  the  attempt  that  had  been  made  on  her  liberty,  she  thought  she 
was  now  released  from  her  promise  to  guard  against  a  past  and 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  365 

imaginary  peril.  So  after  dinner  she  slipped  out  alone,  and  went 
to  the  mistress  of  the  school  where  she  had  received  an  elemen- 
tary education.  She  had  ever  since  continued  her  acquaintance 
with  that  lady,  who,  kind-hearted,  and  touched  by  her  situation, 
often  employed  her  industry,  and  was  far  from  blind  to  the 
improvement  that  had  for  some  time  been  silently  working  in  the 
mind  of  her  old  pupil. 

Fanny  had  a  long  conversation  with  this  lady,  and  she  brought 
back  a  bundle  of  books.  The  light  might  have  been  seen  that 
night,  and  many  nights  after,  burning  long  and  late  from  her  little 
window.  And  having  recovered  her  old  freedom  of  habits,  which 
Simon,  poor  man,  did  not  notice,  and  which  Sarah,  thinking  that 
anything  was  better  than  moping  at  home,  did  not  remonstrate 
against,  Fanny  went  out  regularly  for  two  hours,  or  sometimes  for 
even  a  longer  period,  every  evening  after  old  Simon  had  composed 
himself  to  the  nap  that  filled  up  the  interval  between  dinner  and 
tea. 

In  a  very  short  time — a  time  that  with  ordinary  stimulants 
would  have  seemed  marvellously  short — Fanny's  handwriting  was 
not  the  same  thing ;  her  manner  of  talking  became  different ; 
she  no  longer  called  herself  '  Fanny  "  when  she  spoke ;  the  music 
her  voice  was  more  quiet  and  settled ;  her  sweet  expression  of 
face  was  more  thoughtful ;  the  eyes  seemed  to  have  deepened  in 
their  very  color ;  she  was  no  longer  heard  chanting  to  herself  as 
she  tripped  along.  The  books  that  she  nightly  fed  on  had  passed 
into  her  mind ;  the  poetry  that  had  ever  unconsciously  sported 
round  her  young  years  began  now  to  create  poetry  in  herself. 
Nay,  it  might  almost  have  seemed  as  if  that  restless  disorder 
of  the  intellect,  which  the  dullards  had  called  Idiotcy,  had  been 
the  wild  efforts,  not  of  Folly,  but  of  GENIUS  seeking  to  find  its 
path  and  outlet  from  the  cold  and  dreary  solitude  to  which  the 
circumstances  of  her  early  life  had  compelled  it. 

Days,  even  weeks,  passed — she  never  spoke  of  Vaudemont. 
And  once,  when  Sarah,  astonished  and  bewildered  by  the  change 
in  her  young  mistress,  asked : 

"  When  does  the  gentleman  come  back? '' 

Fanny  answered,  with  a  mysterious  smile,  "Not  yet,  I  hope — 
not  quite  yet !  " 


366  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  IX. 

«  Thierry.  I  do  begin 

To  feel  an  alteration  in  my  nature, 
And  in  his  full-sailed  confidence  a  shower 
Of  gentle  rain,  that  falling  on  the  fire 
Hath  quenched  it 

*  *  *  * 

How  is  my  heart  divided 
Between  the  duty  of  a  son  and  love  !  " 

BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  :  Thierry  and  TkeodoreL 

VAUDEMONT  had  now  been  a  month  at  Beaufort  Court.  The 
scene  of  a  country-house,  with  the  sports  that  enliven  it,  and  the 
accomplishments  it  calls  forth,  was  one  in  which  he  was  well 
fitted  to  shine.  He  had  been  an  excellent  shot  as  a  boy  ;  and 
though  long  unused  to  the  fowling-piece,  had,  in  India,  acquired 
a  deadly  precision  with  the  rifle ;  so  that  a  very  few  days  of  prac- 
tice in  the  stubbles  and  covers  of  Beaufort  Court  made  his  skill 
the  theme  of  the  guests  and  the  admiration  of  the  keepers.  Hunt- 
ing began,  and — this  pursuit,  always  so  strong  a  passion  in  the 
active  man,  and  which,  to  the  turbulence  and  agitation  of  his 
half-tamed  breast,  now  excited  by  a  kind  of  frenzy  of  hope  and 
fear,  gave  a  vent  and  release — was  a  sport  in  which  he  was  yet 
more  fitted  to  excel.  His  horsemanship,  his  daring,  the  stone 
walls  he  leaped,  and  the  floods  through  which  he  dashed,  fur- 
nished his  companions  with  wondering  tale  and  comment  on  their 
return  home.  Mr.  Marsden,  who,  with  some  other  of  Arthur's 
early  friends,  had  been  invited  to  Beaufort  Court,  in  order  to  wel- 
come its  expected  heir,  and  who  retained  all  the  prudence  which 
had  distinguished  him  of  yore,  when  having  ridden  over  old 
Simon  he  dismounted  to  examine  the  knees  of  his  horse — Mr. 
Marsden,  a  skilful  huntsman,  who  rode  the  most  experienced 
horses  in  the  world,  and  who  generally  contrived  to  be  in  at  the 
death,  without  having  leaped  over  anything  higher  than  a  hurdle, 
suffering  the  bolder  quadruped  (in  case  what  is  called  the  "  know- 
ledge of  the  country" — that  is,  the  knowledge  of  gaps  and  gates 
— failed  him)  to  perform  the  more  dangerous  feats  alone,  as  he 
quietly  scrambled  over,  or  scrambled  through,  upon  foot,  and 
remounted  the  well-taught  animal  when  it  halted  after  the  exploit, 
safe  and  sound — Mr.  Marsden  declared  that  he  never  saw  a  rider 
with  so  little  judgment  as  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  and  that  the 
devil  was  certainly  in  him. 

This  sort  of  reputation,  commonplace  and  merely  physical  as  it 
was  in  itself,  had  a  certain  effect  upon  Camilla ;  it  might  be  an 


NIGHT   AND   MORNINC.  367 

effect  of  fear.  I  do  not  say,  for  I  do  not  know,  what  her  feelings 
towards  Vaudemont  exactly  were.  As  the  calmest  natures  are 
often  those  the  most  hurried  away  by  their  contraries,  so,  perhaps, 
he  awed  and  dazzled  rather  than  pleased  her ;  at  least,  he  cer- 
tainly forced  himself  on  her  interest.  Still  she  would  have  started 
in  terror  if  any  one  had  said  to  her,  "  Do  you  love  your  betrothed 
less  than  when  you  met  by  that  happy  lake?  " — and  her  heart 
would  have  indignantly  rebuked  the  questioner.  The  letters  of 
her  lover  were  still  long  and  frequent ;  hers  were  briefer  and  more 
subdued.  But  then  there  was  constraint  in  the  correspondence — 
it  was  submitted  to  her  mother. 

Whatever  might  be  Vaudemont' s  manner  to  Camilla  whenever 
occasion  threw  them  alone  together,  he  certainly  did  not  make 
his  attentions  glaring  enough  to  be  remarked.  His  eye  watched 
her  rather  than  his  lip  addressed ;  he  kept  as  much  aloof  as  pos- 
sible from  the  rest  of  her  family,  and  his  customary  bearing  was 
silent  even  to  gloom.  But  there  were  moments  when  he  indulged 
in  a  fitful  exuberance  of  spirits,  which  had  something  strained 
and  unnatural.  He  had  outlived  Lord  Lilburne's  short  liking ; 
for  since  he  had  resolved  no  longer  to  keep  watch  on  that  noble 
gamester's  method  of  play,  he  played  but  little  himself;  and 
Lord  Lilburne  saw  that  he  had  no  chance  of  ruining  him — there 
was,  therefore,  no  longer  any  reason  to  like  him.  But  this  was 
not  all ;  when  Vaudemont  had  been  at  the  house  somewhat  more 
than  two  weeks,  Lilburne,  petulant  and  impatient,  whether  at  his 
refusals  to  join  the  card-table,  or  at  the  moderation  with  which, 
when  he  did,  he  confined  his  ill-luck  to  petty  losses,  one  day 
limped  up  to  him,  as  he  stood  at  the  embrasure  of  the  window, 
gazing  on  the  wide  lands  beyond,  and  said : 

"  Vaudemont,  you  are  bolder  in  hunting,  they  tell  me,  than 
you  are  at  whist." 

"  Honors  don't  tell  against  one — over  a  hedge  !  " 

"What  do  you  mean  ?  "  said  Lilburne,  rather  haughtily. 

Vaudemont  was,  at  that  moment,  in  one  of  those  bitter  moods 
when  the  sense  of  his  situation,  the  sight  of  the  usurper  in  his 
home,  often  swept  away  the  gentler  thoughts  inspired  by  his  fatal 
passion.  And  the  tone  of  Lord  Lilburne,  and  his  loathing  to  the 
man,  were  too  much  for  his  temper. 

"Lord  Lilburne,"  he  said,  and  his  lip  curled,  "if  you  had 
been  born  poor,  you  would  have  made  a  great  fortune — you  play 
luckily." 

"  How  am  I  to  take  this,  sir?  " 

"As  you  please,"  answered  Vaudemont,  calmly,  but  with  an 
eye  of  fire.  And  he  turned  away. 


3 68  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

Lilburne  remained  on  the  spot  very  thoughtful :  ' '  Hum  !  he 
suspects  me.  I  cannot  quarrel  on  such  ground — the  suspicion 
itself  dishonors  me — I  must  seek  another." 

The  next  day,  Lilburne,  who  was  familiar  with  Mr.  Marsden 
/though  the  latter  gentleman  never  played  at  the  same  table), 
asked  that  prudent  person,  after  breakfast,  if  he  happened  to  have 
his  pistols  with  him. 

' '  Yes ;  I  always  take  them  into  the  country — one  may  as  well 
practise  when  one  has  the  opportunity.  Besides,  sportsmen  are 
often  quarrelsome ;  and  if  it  is  known  that  one  shoots  well, — it 
keeps  one  out  of  quarrels  !  " 

"  Very  true,"  said  Lilburne,  rather  admiringly ;  "I  have  made 
the  same  remark  myself  when  I  was  younger,  I  have  not  shot  with 
a  pistol  for  some  years.  I  am  well  enough  now  to  walk  out  with 
the  help  of  a  stick.  Suppose  we  practice  for  half-an-hour  or  so." 

"With  all  my  heart,"  said  Mr.  Marsden. 

The  pistols  were  brought,  and  they  strolled  forth  ;  Lord  Lil- 
burne found  his  hand  out. 

"As  I  never  hunt  now,"  said  the  peer,  and  he  gnashed  his 
teeth,  and  glanced  at  his  maimed  limb;  " for  though  lameness 
would  not  prevent  my  keeping  my  seat,  violent  exercise  hurts  my 
leg ;  and  Brodie  says,  any  fresh  accident  might  bring  on  tic 
douloureux  ;  and  as  my  gout  does  not  permit  me  to  join  the  shoot- 
ing parties  at  present,  it  would  be  a  kindness  in  you  to  lend  me 
your  pistols — it  would  while  away  an  hour  or  so ;  though,  thank 
Heaven,  my  duelling  days  are  over  !  " 

"Certainly,"  said  Mr.  Marsden;  and  the  pistols  were  con- 
signed to  Lord  Lilburne. 

Four  days  from  the  date,  as  Mr.  Marsden,  Vaudemont,  and 
some  other  gentlemen,  were  making  for  the  covers,  they  came 
upon  Lord  Lilburne,  who,  in  a  part  of  the  park  not  within  sight 
or  sound  of  the  house,  was  amusing  himself  with  Mr.  Marsden's 
pistols,  which  Dykeman  was  at  hand  to  load  for  him.  He  turned 
round,  not  at  all  disconcerted  by  the  interruption. 

"You  have  no  idea  how  I've  improved,  Marsden — just  see  !  " 
and  he  pointed  to  a  glove  nailed  to  a  tree.  "I've  hit  that  mark 
twice  in  five  times ;  and  every  time  I  have  gone  straight  enough 
along  the  line  to  have  killed  my  man." 

"Ay,  the  mark  itself  does  not  so  much  signify,"  said  Mr. 
Marsden  :  "at  least,  not  in  actual  duelling — the  great  thing  is  to 
be  in  the  line." 

While  he  spoke,  Lord  Lilburne's  ball  went  a  third  time  through 
the  glove.  His  cold  bright  eye  turned  on  Vaudemont,  as  he  said, 
Vv'ith  a  smile. 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  369 

"They  tell  me  you  shoot  well  with  a  fowling-piece,  my  dear 
Vaudemont,  are  you  equally  adroit  with  a  pistol?  " 

"  You  may  see,  if  you  like;  but  you  take  aim,  Lord  Lilburne; 
that  would  be  of  no  use  in  English  duelling.  Permit  me." 

He  walked  to  the  glove,  and  tore  from  it  one  of  the  fingers, 
which  he  fastened  separately  to  the  tree,  took  the  pistol  from 
Dykeman  as  he  walked  past  him,  gained  the  spot  whence  to  fire, 
turned  at  once  round,  without  apparent  aim,  and  the  finger  fell 
to  the  ground. 

Lilburne  stood  aghast. 

"That's  wonderful!"  said  Marsden;  "quite  wonderful. 
Where  the  devil  did  you  get  such  a  knack  ? — for  it  is  only  knack, 
after  all!" 

"  I  lived  for  many  years  in  a  country  where  the  practice  was 
constant,  where  all  that  belongs  to  rifle-shooting  was  a  necessary 
accomplishment — a  country  in  which  man  had  often  to  contend 
against  the  wild  beast.  In  civilized  States,  man  himself  supplies 
the  place  of  the  wild  beast — but  we  don't  hunt  him  !  Lord  Lil- 
burne," (and  this  was  added  with  a  smiling  and  disdainful 
whisper),  "  you  must  practise  a  little  more." 

But  disregardful  of  the  advice,  from  that  day  Lord  Lilburne's 
morning  occupation  was  gone.  He  thought  no  longer  of  a  duel 
with  Vaudemont.  As  soon  as  the  sportsman  had  left  him,  he 
bade  Dykeman  take  up  the  pistols,  and  walked  straight  home  into 
the  library,  where  Robert  Beaufort,  who  was  no  sportsman,  gen- 
erally spent  his  mornings. 

He  flung  himself  into  an  arm-chair,  and  said,  as  he  stirred  the 
fire  with  unusual  vehemence : 

"Beaufort,  I'm  very  sorry  I  asked  you  to  invite  Vaudemont. 
He's  a  very  ill-bred,  disagreeable  fellow  !  " 

Beaufort  threw  down  his  steward's  account-book,  on  which  he 
was  employed,  and  replied  : 

"  Lilburne,  I  have  never  had  an  easy  moment  since  that  man 
has  been  in  the  house.  As  he  was  your  guest,  I  did  not  like  to 
speak  before,  but  don't  you  observe — you  must  observe — how  like 
he  is  to  the  old  family  portraits  ?  The  more  I  have  examined 
him,  the  more  another  resemblance  grows  upon  me.  In  a  word," 
said  Robert,  pausing  and  breathing  hard,  "  if  his  name  were  not 
Vaudemont — if  his  history  were  not,  apparently,  so  well  known, 
I  should  say — I  should  swear,  that  it  is  Philip  Morton  who  sleeps 
under  this  roof!  " 

"Ha!"  said  Lilburne,  with  nn  earnestness  that  surprised 
Beaufort,  who  expected  to  have  heard  his  brother-in-law's  sneer- 
ing sarcasm  at  his  fears;  "  the  likeness  you  speak  of  to  the  old 
84 


370  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

portraits  did  strike  me;  it  struck  Marsden,  too,  the  other  day,  as 
we  were  passing  through  the  picture-gallery ;  and  Marsden  re- 
marked it  aloud  to  Vaudemont.  I  remember  now  that  he  changed 
countenance  and  made  no  answer.  Hush  !  hush  !  hold  your 
tongue,  let  me  think — let  me  think.  This  Philip — yes — yes — I 
and  Arthur  saw  him  with — with  Gawtrey — in  Paris — " 

"  Gawtrey  !  Was  that  the  name  of  the  rogue  he  was  said 
to—" 

"Yes — yes — yes.  Ah!  now  I  guess  the  meaning  of  those 
looks — those  words,"  muttered  Lilburne,  between  his  teeth. 
"This  pretension  to  the  name  of  Vaudemont  was  always  apo- 
cryphal— the  story  always  but  half  believed — the  invention  of  a 
woman  in  love  with  him ;  the  claim  on  your  property  is  made  at 
the  very  time  he  appears  in  England.  Ha  !  have  you  a  news- 
paper there  ?  give  it  me.  No  !  'tis  not  in  this  paper.  Ring  the 
bell  for  the  file  !  " 

"What's  the  matter?  You  terrify  me!"  gasped  out  Mr. 
Beaufort,  as  he  rang  the  bell. 

"Why  !  have  you  not  seen  an  advertisement,  repeated  several 
times  within  the  last  month?  " 

' '  I  never  read  advertisements ;  except  in  the  county  paper  if 
land  is  to  be  sold." 

"Nor  I  often;  but  this  caught  my  eye.  John"  (here  the 
servant  entered),  "bring  the  file  of  the  newspapers.  .  The  name 
of  the  witness  whom  Mrs.  Morton  appealed  to  was  Smith,  the 
same  name  as  the  captain  ;  what  was  the  Christian  name  ?  " 

"  I  don't  remember." 

"  Here  are  the  papers — shut  the  door — and  here  is  the  adver- 
tisement: 'If  Mr.  William  Smith,  son  of  Jeremiah  Smith,  who 
formerly  rented  the  farm  of  Shipdale-Bury,  under  the  late  Right 
Hon.  Charles  Leopold  Beaufort  (that's  your  uncle),  and  who  emi- 
grated in  the  year  18 —  to  Australia,  will  apply  to  Mr.  Barlow, 
Solicitor,  Essex  Street,  Strand,  he  will  hear  of  something  to  his 
advantage.'  " 

' '  Good  Heavens  !  Why  did  not  you  mention  this  to  me  be- 
fore?" 

"Because  I  did  not  think  it  of  any  importance.  In  the  first 
place,  there  might  be  some  legacy  left  to  the  man,  quite  distinct 
from  your  business.  Indeed,  that  was  the  probable  supposition  ; 
or  even  if  connected  with  the  claim,  such  an  advertisement  might 
be  but  a  despicable  attempt  to  frighten  you.  Never  mind — don't 
look  so  pale — after  all,  this  is  a  proof  that  the  witness  is  not 
found;  that  Captain  Smith  is  neither  the  Smith,  nor  has  discov- 
ered where  the  Smith  is  !  " 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  371 

"  True  !  "  observed  Mr.  Beaufort :   "  true — very  true  !  " 

"  Humph  !  "  said  Lord  Lilburne,  who  was  still  rapidly  glanc- 
ing over  the  file ;  "  Here  is  another  advertisement  which  I  never 
saw  before  :  this  looks  suspicious  :  '  If  the  person  who  called  on 

the  — of  September,  on  Mr.  Morton,  linendraper,  etc.,  of  N , 

will  renew  his  application  personally  or  by  letter,  he  may  now 
obtain  the  information  he  sought  for.'  ' 

"Morton!  The  woman's  brother!  Their  uncle!  It  is  too 
clear  !  " 

"But  what  brings  this  man,  if  he  be  really  Philip  Morton, 
what  brings  him  here  ? — to  spy  or  to  threaten  ?  " 

"  I  will  get  him  out  of  the  house  this  day." 

< '  No — no  ;  turn  the  watch  upon  himself.  I  see  now  ;  he  is 
attracted  by  your  daughter ;  sound  her  quietly  ;  don't  tell  her  to 
discourage  his  confidences;  find  out,  if  he  ever  speaks  of  these 
Mortons.  Ha !  I  recollect — he  has  spoken  to  me  of  the  Mor- 
tons, but  vaguely — I  forget  what.  Humph  !  this  is  a  man  of 
spirit  and  daring — watch  him,  I  say, — watch  him  !  When  does 
Arthur  come  back  ?  " 

"  He  has  been  travelling  so  slowly,  for  he  still  complains  of  his 
health,  and  has  had  relapses :  but  he  ought  to  be  in  Paris  this 
week  ;  perhaps  is  there  now.  Good  Heavens  !  he  must  not  meet 
this  man  !  " 

"Do  what  I  tell  you  !  get  out  all  from  your  daughter.  Never 
fear :  he  can  do  nothing  against  you  except  by  law.  But  if  he 
really  like  Camilla—" 

"  He  !  Philip  Morton — the  adventurer — the — " 

"  He  is  the  eldest  son  :  remember,  you  thought  even  of  accept- 
ing the  second.  He  may  find  the  witness ;  he  may  win  his  suit ; 
if  he  like  Camilla,  there  may  be  a  compromise." 

Mr.  Beaufort  felt  as  if  turned  to  ice. 

"You  think  him  likely  to  win  this  infamous  suit,  then?"  he 
faltered. 

"Did  not  you  guard  against  the  possibility  by  securing  the 
brother?  More  worth  while  to  do  it  with  the  man.  Hark  ye  !  the 
politics  of  private  are  like  those  of  public  life, — when  the  State 
can't  crush  a  demagogue,  it  should  entice  him  over.  If  you  can 
ruin  this  dog"  (and  Lilburne  stamped  his  foot  fiercely,  forgetful 
of  the  gout),  "ruin  him!  hang  him  !  If  you  can't "  (and  here 
with  a  wry  face  he  carressed  the  injured  foot,)  "if  you  can't 
('sdeath,  what  a  twinge  !)  and  he  can  ruin_jw*, — bring  him  into 
the  family,  and  make  his  secret  ours  !  I  must  go  and  lie  down, 
I  have  over-excited  myself." 

In  great  perplexity  Beaufort  repaired  at  once  to  Camilla.     His 


372  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

nervous  agitation  betrayed  itself,  though  he  smiled  a  ghastly  smile, 
and  intended  to  be  exceeding  cool  and  collected.  His  questions, 
which  confused  and  alarmed  her,  soon  drew  out  the  fact,  that  the 
very  first  time  Vaudemont  had  been  introduced  to  her  he  had 
spoken  of  the  Mortons ;  and  that  he  had  often  afterwards  alluded 
to  the  subject,  and  seemed  at  first  strongly  impressed  with  the 
notion  that  the  younger  brother  was  under  Beaufort's  protection  ; 
though  at  last  he  appeared  reluctantly  convinced  of  the  con- 
trary. Robert,  however  agitated,  preserved  at  least  enough  of 
his  natural  slyness  not  to  let  out  that  he  suspected  Vaudemont  to 
be  Philip  Morton  himself,  for  he  feared  lest  his  daughter  should 
betray  that  suspicion  to  its  object. 

"But,"  he  said,  with  a  look  meant  to  win  confidence,  "  I  dare 
say  he  knows  these  young  men.  I  should  like  myself  to  know 
more  about  them.  Learn  all  you  can,  and  tell  me,  and,  I  say — I 
say,  Camilla, — he  !  he  !  he  ! — you  have  made  a  conquest,  you  lit- 
tle flirt,  you  !  Did  he,  this  Vaudemont,  ever  say  how  much  he 
admired  you  !  " 

"He!  never!"  said  Camilla,  blushing,  and  then  turning 
pale. 

"But  he  looks  it.  Ah!  you  say  nothing,  then.  Well,  well, 
don't  discourage  him ;  that  is  to  say, — yes,  don't  discourage  him, 
Talk  to  him  as  much  as  you  can  ;  ask  him  about  his  own  early 
life.  I've  a  particular  wish  to  know ;  'tis  of  great  importance  to 
me." 

"  But,  my  dear  father,"  said  Camilla,  trembling,  and  thorough- 
ly bewildered,  "  I  fear  this  man, — I  fear — I  fear — " 

Was  she  going  to  add,  "  I  fear  myself  ?  "  I  know  not ;  but  she 
stopped  short,  and  burst  into  tears. 

"Hang  these  girls!  "  muttered  Mr.  Beaufort,  " always  crying 
when  they  ought  to  be  of  use  to  one.  Go  down,  dry  your  eyes ; 
do  as  I  tell  you — get  all  you  can  from  him.  Fear  him  !  Yes,  I 
dare  say  she  does!"  muttered  the  poor  man,  as  he  closed  the 
door. 

From  that  time  what  wonder  that  Camilla's  manner  to  Vaude- 
mont was  yet  more  embarrassed  than  ever  :  what  wonder  that  he 
put  his  own  heart's  interpretation  on  that  confusion.  Beaufort 
took  care  to  thrust  her  more  often  than  before  in  his  way ;  he 
suddenly  affected  a  creeping,  fawning  civility  to  Vaudemont ;  he 
was  sure  he  was  fond  of  music ;  what  did  he  think  of  that  new  air 
Camilla  was  so  fond  of?  He  must  be  a  judge  of  scenery,  he  who 
had  seen  so  much  :  there  were  beautiful  landscapes  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, and  if  he  would  forego  his  sports,  Camilla  drew  prettily, 
had  an  eye  for  that  sort  of  thing,  and  was  so  fond  of  riding. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  373 

Vaudemont  was  astonished  at  this  change,  but  his  delight  was 
greater  than  the  astonishment.  He  began  to  perceive  that  his 
identity  was  suspected  ;  perhaps  Beaufort,  more  generous  than  he 
had  deemed  him,  meant  to  repay  every  early  wrong  or  harshness 
by  one  inestimable  blessing.  The  generous  interpret  motives  in 
extremes — even  too  enthusiastic  or  too  severe.  Vaudemont  felt 
as  if  he  had  wronged  the  wronger ;  he  began  to  conquer  even  his 
dislike  to  Robert  Beaufort.  For  some  days  he  was  thus  thrown 
much  with  Camilla ;  the  questions  her  father  forced  her  to  put  to 
him,  uttered  tremulously  and  fearfully,  seemed  to  him  proofs  of 
her  interest  in  his  fate.  His  feelings  to  Camilla,  so  sudden  in 
their  growth — so  ripened  and  so  favored  by  the  Sub-Ruler  of  the 
world — CIRCUMSTANCE — might  not,  perhaps,  have  the  depth  and 
the  calm  completeness  of  that  One  True  Love,  of  which  there  are 
many  counterfeits ;  and  which  in  Man,  at  least,  possibly  requires 
the  touch  and  mellowness,  if  not  of  time,  at  least  of  many  memo- 
ries— of  perfect  and  tried  conviction  of  the  faith,  the  worth,  the 
value  and  the  beauty  of  the  heart  to  which  it  clings ;  but  those 
feelings  were  nevertheless,  strong,  ardent  and  intense.  He  believ- 
ed himself  beloved ;  he  was  in  Elysium.  But  he  did  not  yet 
declare  the  passion  that  beamed  in  his  eyes.  No  !  he  would  not 
yet  claim  the  hand  of  Camilla  Beaufort,  for  he  imagined  the  time 
would  soon  come  when  he  could  claim  it,  not  as  the  inferior  01  the 
supplicant,  but  as  the  lord  of  her  father's  fate, 

CHAPTER  X. 

"  Here's  something  got  amongst  us  !  "—Knight  of  Malta. 

Two  or  three  nights  after  his  memorable  conversation  with 
Robert  Beaufort,  as  Lord  Lilburne  was  undressing  he  said  to  his 
valet : 

"Dykeman,  I  am  getting  well." 

"  Indeed,  my  lord,  I  never  saw  your  lordship  look  better." 

' '  There  you  lie.  I  looked  better  last  year — I  looked  better  the 
year  before — and  I  looked  better  and  better  every  year  back  to  the 
age  of  twenty-one  !  But  I'm  not  talking  of  looks ;  no  man  with 
money  wants  looks.  I  am  talking  of  feelings.  I  feel  better.  The 

gout  is  almost  gone.  I  have  been  quiet  now  for  a  month that's 

a  long  time — time  wasted  when,  at  my  age,  I  have  so  little  time 
to  waste.  Besides,  as  you  know,  I  am  very  much  in  love  !  " 

"  In  love,  my  lord  ?  I  thought  that  you  told  me  never  to  speak 
of—" 

' {  Blockhead  !     What  the  deuce  was  the  good  of  speaking  about 


374  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

it  when  I  was  wrapped  in  flannels  !  I  am  never  in  love  when  I 
am  ill — who  is  ?  I  am  well  now,  or  nearly  so ;  and  I've  had 
things  to  vex  me — things  to  make  this  place  very  disagreeable;  I 
shall  go  to  town,  and  before  this  day  week  perhaps,  that  charming 
face  may  enliven  the  solitude  of  Fernside.  I  shall  look  to  it 
myself  now.  I  see  you're  going  to  say  something.  Spare  your- 
self the  trouble  !  Nothing  ever  goes  wrong  if  /  myself  take  it  in 
hand." 

The  next  day  Lord  Lilburne,  who,  in  truth,  felt  himself  uncom- 
fortable and  gene  in  the  presence  of  Vaudemont;  who  had  won  as 
much  as  the  guests  at  Beaufort  Court  seemed  inclined  to  lose;  and 
who  made  it  the  rule  of  his  life  to  consult  his  own  pleasure  and 
amusement  before  anything  else,  sent  for  his  post-horses,  and 
informed  his  brother-in-law  of  his  departure. 

"  And  you  leave  me  alone  with  this  man  just  when  I  am  con- 
vinced that  he  is  the  person  we  suspected  !  My  dear  Lilburne, 
do  stay  till  he  goes." 

"  Impossible  !  I  am  between  fifty  and  sixty — every  moment  is 
precious  at  that  time  of  life.  Besides,  I've  said  all  I  can  say ; 
rest  quiet — act  on  the  defensive — entangle  this  cursed  Vaudemont, 
or  Morton,  or  whoever  he  be,  in  the  mesh  of  your  daughter's 
charms,  and  then  get  rid  of  him,  not  before.  This  can  do  no 
harm,  let  the  matter  turn  out  how  it  will.  Read  the  papers  ;  and 
send  for  Blackwell  if  you  want  advice  on  any  new  advertisements. 
I  don't  see  that  anything  more  is  to  be  done  at  present.  You 
can  write  to  me  ;  I  shall  be  at  Park  Lane  or  Fernside.  Take  care 
of  yourself.  You're  a  lucky  fellow — you  never  have  the  gout ! 
Good-bye." 

And  in  half  an  hour  Lord  Lilburne  was  on  the  road  to  London. 

The  departure  of  Lilburne  was  a  signal  to  many  others,  especially 
and  naturally  to  those  he  himself  had  invited.  He  had  not 
announced  to  such  visitors  his  intention  of  going  till  his  carriage 
was  at  the  door.  This  might  be  delicacy  or  carelessness,  just  as 
people  chose  to  take  it :  and  how  they  did  take  it,  Lord  Lilburne, 
much  too  selfish  to  be  well-bred,  did  not  care  a  rush.  The  next 
day,  half  at  least  of  the  guests  were  gone  ;  and  even  Mr.  Marsden, 
who  had  been  specially  invited  on  Arthur's  account,  announced 
that  he  should  go  after  dinner  !  He  always  travelled  by  night — 
he  slept  well  on  the  road — a  day  was  not  lost  by  it. 

"  And  it  is  so  long  since  you  saw  Arthur,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort, 
in  remonstrance,  "and  I  expect  him  every  day." 

"  Very  sorry — best  fellow  in  the  world — but  the  fact  is,  that  I 
am  not  very  well  myself.  I  want  a  little  sea  air ;  I  shall  go  to 
Dover  or  Brighton.  But  I  suppose  you  will  have  the  house  full 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  375 

again  about  Christmas  ;  in  that  case,  I  shall  be  delighted  to  repeat 
my  visit." 

The  fact  was,  that  Mr.  Marsden,  without  Lilburne's  intellect  on 
the  one  hand,  or  vices  on  the  other,  was,  like  that  noble  sensualist, 
one  of  the  broken  pieces  of  the  great  looking-glass  "SELF." 
He  was  noticed  in  society,  as  always  haunting  the  places  where 
Lilburne  played  at  cards,  carefully  choosing  some  other  table,  and 
as  carefully  betting  upon  Lilburne's  side.  The  card-tables  were 
now  broken  up  ;  Vaudemont's  superiority  in  shooting,  and  the 
manner  in  which  he  engrossed  the  talk  of  the  sportsmen,  dis- 
pleased him.  He  was  bored;  he  wanted  to  be  off;  and  off  he 
went.  Vaudemont  felt  that  the  time  was  come  for  him  to  depart, 
too  ;  but  Robert  Beaufort — who  felt  in  his  society  the  painful 
fascination  of  the  bird  with  the  boa,  who  hated  to  see  him  there, 
and  dreaded  to  see  him  depart,  who  had  not  yet  extracted  all  the 
confirmation  of  his  persuasions  that  he  required,  for  Vaudemont 
easily  enough  parried  the  artless  questions  of  Camilla — pressed 
him  to  stay  with  so  eager  an  hospitality,  and  made  Camilla  her- 
self falter  out,  against  her  will  and  even  against  her  remonstrances 
— (she  never  before  had  dared  to  remonstrate  with  either  father 
or  mother), — "  Could  not  you  stay  a  few  days  longer?  " — that 
Vaudemont  was  too  contented  to  yield  to  his  own  inclinations ; 
and  so  for  some  little  time  longer,  he  continued  to  move  before 
the  eyes  of  Mr.  Beaufort — stern,  sinister,  silent,  mysterious — like 
one  of  the  family  pictures  stepped  down  from  its  frame.  Vaude- 
mont wrote,  however,  to  Fanny,  to  excuse  his  delay  ;  and  anxious 
to  hear  from  her  as  to  her  own  and  Simon's  health,  bade  her 
direct  her  letter  to  his  lodging  in  London  (of  which  he  gave  her 
the  address),  whence,  if  he  still  continued  to  defer  his  departure, 
it  would  be  forwarded  to  him.  He  did  not  do  this,  however,  till 
he  had  been  at  Beaufort  Court  several  days  after  Lilburne's 
departure,  and  till,  in  fact,  two  days  before  the  eventful  one 
which  closed  his  visit. 

The  party,  now  greatly  diminished,  were  at  breakfast,  when 
the  servant  entered,  as  usual,  with  the  letter-bag.  Mr.  Beaufort, 
who  was  always  important  and  pompous  in  the  small  ceremonials 
of  life,  unlocked  the  precious  deposit  with  slow  dignity,  drew 
forth  the  newspapers,  which  he  threw  on  the  table,  and  which  the 
gentlemen  of  the  party  eagerly  seized;  then,  diving  out  one  by 
one,  jerked  first  a  letter  to  Camilla,  next  a  letter  to  Vaudemont, 
and  thirdly,  seized  a  letter  for  himself. 

"  I  beg  that  there  may  be  no  ceremony,  Monsieur  de  Vaude- 
mont :  pray  excuse  me  and  follow  my  example  :  I  see  this  letter 
is  from  my  son ;  ' '  and  he  broke  the  seal. 


376  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

The  letter  ran  thus : 
"  MY  DEAR  FATHER  : 

' '  Almost  as  soon  as  you  receive  this,  I  shall  be  with  you.  Ill 
as  I  am,  I  can  have  no  peace  till  I  see  and  consult  you.  The 
most  startling — the  most  painful  intelligence  has  just  been  con- 
veyed to  me.  It  is  of  a  nature  not  to  bear  any  but  personal  com- 
munication. 

' '  Your  affectionate  son, 
"ARTHUR  BEAUFORT. 

' '  Boulogne. 

"  P.  S. — This  will  go  by  the  same  packet-boat  that  I  shall  take 
myself,  and  can  only  reach  you  a  few  hours  before  I  arrive." 

Mr.  Beaufort's  trembling  hand  dropped  the  letter ;  he  grasped 
the  elbow  of  the  chair  to  save  him  from  falling.  It  was  clear  ! 
The  same  visitor  who  had  persecuted  himself  had  now  sought  his 
son !  He  grew  sick ;  his  son  might  have  heard  the  witness ;  might 
be  convinced.  His  son  himself  now  appeared  to  him  as  a  foe — 
for  the  father  dreaded  the  son's  honor !  He  glanced  furtively 
round  the  table,  till  his  eye  rested  on  Vaudemont,  and  his  terror 
was  redoubled,  for  Vaudemont's  face,  usually  so  calm,  was  ani- 
mated to  an  extraordinary  degree,  as  he  now  lifted  it  from  the 
letter  he  had  just  read.  Their  eyes  met.  Robert  Beaufort  looked 
on  him  as  a  prisoner  at  the  bar  looks  on  the  accusing  counsel,  when 
he  first  commences  his  harangue. 

"  Mr.  Beaufort,"  said  the  guest,  "  the  letter  you  have  given  me 
summons  me  to  London  on  important  business,  and  immediately 
Suffer  me  to  send  for  horses  at  your  earliest  convenience." 

"  What's  the  matter?  "  said  the  feeble  and  seldom-heard  voice 
of  Mrs.  Beaufort.  "What's  the  matter,  Robert?  is  Arthur 
coming?  " 

"He  comes  to-day,"  said  the  father,  with  a  deep  sigh  ;  and 
Vaudemont,  at  that  moment  rising  from  his  half-finished  break- 
fast, with  a  bow  that  included  the  group,  and  with  a  glance  that 
lingered  on  Camilla,  as  she  bent  over  her  own  unopened  letter  (a 
letter  from  Winandermere,  the  seal  of  which  she  dared  not  yet  to 
break,)  quitted  the  room.  He  hastened  to  his  own  chamber,  and 
strode  to  and  fro  with  a  stately  step — the  step  of  the  Master — 
then,  taking  forth  the  letter,  he  again  hurried  over  its  contents. 
They  ran  thus : 

"  DEAR  SIR: 

"  At  last  the  missing  witness  has  applied  to  me.     He  proves  to 


NiGHX    AND    MORNING.  377 

be,  as  you  conjectured,  the  same  person  who  had  called  on  Mr. 
Roger  Morton ;  but  as  there  are  some  circumstances  on  which  I 
wish  to  take  your  instructions  without  a  moment's  delay,  I  shall 
leave  London  by  the  mail,  and  wait  you  at  D (at  the  princi- 
pal inn),  which  is,  I  understand,  twenty  miles,  on  the  high  road, 
from  Beaufort  Court. 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir, 
"  Yours,  etc., 

"  JOHN  BARLOW." 
"  Essex  Street.'' 

Vaudemont  was  yet  lost  in  the  emotions  that  this  letter  aroused, 
when  they  came  to  announce  that  his  chaise  had  arrived.  As  he 
went  down  the  stairs  he  met  Camilla,  who  was  on  the  way  to  her 
own  room. 

"  Miss  Beaufort,"  said  he,  in  a  low  and  tremulous  voice,  "  in 
wishing  you  farewell  I  may  not  now  say  more.  I  leave  you,  and, 
strange  to  say,  I  do  not  regret  it,  for  I  go  upon  an  errand  that 
may  entitle  me  to  return  again,  and  speak  those  thoughts  which 
are  uppermost  in  my  soul,  even  at  this  moment." 

He  raised  her  hand  to  his  lips  as  he  spoke,  and  at  that  moment 
Mr.  Beaufort  looked  from  the  door  of  his  own  room,  and  cried 
"  Camilla."  She  was  too  glad  to  escape.  Philip  gazed  after  her 
light  form  for  an  instant,  and  then  hurried  down  the  stairs. 

CHAPTER  XL 

" Longueville. — What!  are  you  married,  Beaufort? 
Beaufort. — Ay,  as  fast 

As  words,  and  hands,  and  hearts,  and  priest, 
Could  make  us." — BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  :  Noble  Gentleman, 

IN  the  parlor  of  the  inn  at  D sat  Mr.  John  Barlow.  He 

had  just  finished  his  breakfast,  and  was  writing  letters  and  look- 
ing over  papers  connected  with  his  various  business,  when  the 
door  was  thrown  open,  and  a  gentleman  entered  abruptly. 

"  Mr.  Beaufort,"  said  the  lawyer,  rising, — "  Mr.  Philip  Beau- 
fort— for  such  I  now  feel  you  are  by  right — though,"  he  added, 
with  his  usual  formal  and  quiet  smile,  "not  yet  bylaw;  and 
much — very  much — remains  to  be  done  to  make  the  law  and  the 
right  the  same ;  I  congratulate  you  on  having  something  at  last 
to  work  on.  I  had  begun  to  despair  of  rinding  up  our  witness, 
after  a  month's  advertising;  and  had  commenced  other  investi- 
gations, of  which  I  will  speak  to  you  presently,  when  yesterday, 


378  MIGHT   AMJ   MORNING. 

on  my  return  to  town  from  an  errand  on  your  business,  I  had  the 
pleasure  of  a  visit  from  William  Smith  himself.  My  dear  sir,  do 
not  yet  be  too  sanguine.  It  seems  that  this  poor  fellow,  having 
known  misfortune,  was  in  America  when  the  first  fruitless  inquiries 
were  made.  Long  after  this  he  returned  to  the  colony,  and  there 
met  with  a  brother,  who,  as  I  drew  from  him,  was  a  convict. 
He  helped  the  brother  to  escape.  They  both  came  to  England. 
William  learned  from  a  distant  relation,  who  lent  him  some  little 
money,  of  the  inquiry  that  had  been  set  on  foot  for  him ;  con- 
sulted his  brother,  who  desired  him  to  leave  all  to  his  manage- 
ment. The  brother  afterwards  assured  him  that  you  and  Mr. 
Sidney  were  both  dead;  and  it  seems  (for  the  witness  is  simple 
enough  to  allow  me  to  extract  all),  this  same  brother  then  went  to 
Mr.  Beaufort,  to  hold  out  the  threat  of  a  lawsuit,  and  to  offer  the 
sale  of  the  evidence  yet  existing — " 

"And  Mr.  Beaufort?" 

"  I  am  happy  to  say,  seems  to  have  spurned  the  offer.  Mean- 
while William,  incredulous  of  his  brother's  report,  proceeded  to 

N ,  learned  nothing  from  Mr.  Morton,  met  his  brother  again; 

and  the  brother  (confessing  that  he  had  deceived  him  in  the  asser- 
tion that  you  and  Mr.  Sidney  were  dead)  told  him  that  he  had 
known  you  in  earlier  life,  and  set  out  to  Paris  to  seek  you — " 

' '  Known  me  ?     To  Paris  ?  ' ' 

"More  of  this  presently.  William  returned  to  town,  living 
hardly  and  penuriously  on  the  little  his  brother  bestowed  on  him, 
too  melancholy  and  too  poor  for  the  luxury  of  a  newspaper,  and 
never  saw  our  advertisement,  till,  as  luck  would  have  it,  his  money 
was  out;  he  had  heard  nothing  further  of  his  brother,  and  he 
went  for  new  assistance  to  the  same  relation  who  had  before  aided 
him.  This  relation,  to  his  surprise,  received  the  poor  man  very 
kindly,  lent  him  what  he  wanted,  and  then  asked  him  if  he  had 
not  seen  our  advertisement.  The  newspaper  shown  him  con- 
tained both  the  advertisements — that  relating  to  Mr.  Morton's  vis- 
itor, that  containing  his  own  name.  He  coupled  them  both 
together :  called  on  me  at  once.  I  was  from  town  on  your  busi- 
ness. He  returned  to  his  own  home;  the  next  morning  (yester- 
day morning)  came  a  letter  from  his  brother,  which  I  obtained 
from  him  at  last,  and  with  promises  that  no  harm  should  happen 
to  the  writer  on  account  of  it. 

Vaudemont  took  the  letter  and  read  as  follows : 

"  DEAR  WILLIAM  :  No  go  about  the  youngster  I  went  after  : 
all  researches  in  vane.  Paris  develish  expensive.  Never  mind, 
I  have  sene  the  other — the  young  B ;  different  sort  of  fellow 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  3?9 

from  his  father — very  ill — frightened  out  of  his  wits — will  go  off 
to  the  governor,  take  me  with  him  as  far  as  Bullone.  I  think  we 
shall  settel  it  now.  Mind  as  I  saide  before,  don't  put  your  foot 
in  it.  I  send  you  a  Nap  in  the  Seele — all  I  can  spare. 

"Yours, 

"JEREMIAH  SMITH. 

"  Direct  to  me,  Monsieur  Smith — always  a  safe  name — Ship  Inn, 
Bullone." 

"Jeremiah — Smith — Jeremiah  !  " 

"  Do  you  know  the  name,  then  ?  "  said  Mr.  Barlow.  "  Well ; 
the  poor  man  owns  that  he  was  frightened  at  his  brother ;  that 
he  wished  to  do  what  is  right ;  that  he  feared  his  brother  would 
not  let  him ;  that  your  father  was  very  kind  to  him ;  and 
so  he  came  off  at  once  to  me ;  and  I  was  very  luckily  at  home  to 
assure  him  that  the  heir  was  alive,  and  prepared  to  assert  his  rights. 
Now,  then,  Mr.  Beaufort,  we  have  the  witness,  but  will  that  suffice 
us?  I  fear  not.  Will  the  jury  believe  him  with  no  other  testi- 
mony at  his  back  ?  Consider !  When  he  was  gone  I  put  myself 
in  communication  'with  some  officers  at  Bow  Street  about  this 
brother  of  his — a  most  notorious  character,  commonly  called  in 
the  police  slang  Dashing  Jerry — " 

"Ah!     Well,  proceed !" 

"  Your  one  witness,  then,  is  a  very  poor,  penniless  man  ;  his 
brother  is  a  rogue,  a  convict :  this  witness,  too,  is  the  most  timid, 
fluctuating,  irresolute  fellow  I  ever  saw  :  I  should  tremble  for  his 
testimony  against  a  sharp,  bullying  lawyer.  And  that,  sir,  is  all 
at  present  we  have  to  look  to." 

' '  I  see — I  see.  It  is  dangerous  ;  it  is  hazardous.  But  truth  is 
truth;  justice,  justice !  I  will  run  the  risk." 

"Pardon  me,  if  I  ask,  did  you  ever  know  this  brother?  Were 
you  ever  absolutely  acquainted  with  him — in  the  same  house?  " 

"Many  years  since — years  of  early  hardship  and  trial —  I  was 
acquainted  with  him.  What  then  ?  " 

"  I  am  sorry  to  hear  it,"  and  the  lawyer  looked  grave.  "  Do 
you  not  see  that  if  this  witness  is  browbeat ;  is  disbelieved,  and 
if  it  can  be  shown  that  you,  the  claimant,  was — forgive  my  say- 
ing it — intimate  with  a  brother  of  such  a  character,  why  the 
whole  thing  might  be  made  to  look  like  perjury  and  conspiracy. 
If  we  stop  here,  it  is  an  ugly  business  !  " 

"  And  is  this  all  you  have  to  say  to  me?  The  witness  is  found 
— the  only  surviving  witness — the  only  proof  I  ever  shall  or  ever 
can  obtain,  and  you  seek  to  terrify  me — me  too — from  using  the 


380  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

means  for  redress  Providence  itself  vouchsafes  me.  Sir,  I  will 
not  hear  you  !  " 

"  Mr.  Beaufort,  you  are  impatient — it  is  natural.  But  if  we  go 
to  law — that  is,  should  I  have  anything  to  do  with  it,  wait — wait 
till  your  case  is  good.  And  hear  me  yet.  This  is  not  the  only 
proof ;  this  is  not  the  only  witness  :  you  forget  that  there  was  an 
examined  copy  of  the  register ;  we  may  yet  find  that  copy,  and 
the  person  who  copied  it  may  yet  be  alive  to  attest  it.  Occupied 
with  this  thought,  and  weary  of  waiting  the  result  of  our  adver- 
tisement, I  resolved  to  go  into  the  neighborhood  of  Fernside: 
luckily,  there  was  a  gentleman's  seat  to  be  sold  in  the  village.  I 
made  the  survey  of  this  place  my  apparent  business.  After  going 
over  the  house,  I  appeared  anxious  to  see  how  far  some  alterations 
could  be  made — alterations  to  render  it  more  like  Lord  Lilburne's 
villa.  This  led  me  to  request  a  sight  of  that  villa — a  crown  to  the 
housekeeper  got  me  admittance.  The  housekeeper  had  lived  with 
your  father,  and  been  retained  by  his  lordship.  I  soon,  therefore, 
knew  which  were  the  rooms  the  late  Mr.  Beaufort  had  principally 
occupied ;  shown  into  his  study,  where  it  was  probable  he  would 
keep  his  papers,  I  inquired  if  it  were  the  same  furniture  (which 
seemed  likely  enough  from  its  age  and  fashion)  as  in  your  father's 
time:  it  was  so;  Lord  Lilburne  had  bought  the  house  just  as  it 
stood,  and,  save  a  few  additions  in  the  drawing-room,  the  general 
equipment  of  the  villa  remained  unaltered.  You  look  impatient ! 
I'm  coming  to  the  point.  My  eye  fell  upon  an  old  fashioned 
bureau — " 

"  But  we  searched  every  drawer  in  that  bureau  !  " 

"Any  secret  drawers?  " 

"Secret  drawers!  No!  there  were  no  secret  drawers  that  I 
ever  heard  of !  " 

Mr.  Barlow  rubbed  his  hands  and  mused  a  moment. 

"I  was  struck  with  that  bureau  ;  for  my  father  had  had  one 
like  it.  It  is  not  English — it  is  of  Dutch  manufacture." 

"  Yes,  I  have  heard  that  my  father  bought  it  at  a  sale,  three  or 
four  years  after  his  marriage." 

"  I  learned  this  from  the  house-keeper,  who  was  flattered  by  my 
admiring  it.  I  could  not  find  out  from  her  at  what  sale  it  had 
been  purchased,  but  it  was  in  the  neighborhood  she  was  sure.  I 
had  now  a  date  to  go  upon ;  I  learned,  by  careless  inquiries,  what 
sales  near  Fernside  had  taken  place  in  a  certain  year.  A  gentle- 
man had  died  at  that  date  whose  furniture  was  sold  by  auction. 
With  great  difficulty,  I  found  that  his  widow  was  still  alive,  liv- 
ing far  up  the  country  :  I  paid  her  a  visit ;  and,  not  to  fatigue  you 
with  too  long  an  account,  I  have  only  to  say,  that  she  not  only 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  381 

assured  me  that  she  perfectly  remembered  the  bureau,  but  that  it 
had  secret  drawers  and  wells,  very  curiously  contrived ;  nay,  she 
showed  me  the  very  catalogue  in  which  the  said  receptacles  are 
noticed  in  capitals,  to  arrest  the  eye  of  the  bidder,  and  increase 
the  price  of  the  bidding.  That  your  father  should  never  have 
revealed  where  he  stowed  this  document  is  natural  enough,  dur- 
ing the  life  of  his  uncle ;  his  own  life  was  not  spared  long  enough 
to  give  him  much  opportunity  to  explain  afterwards,  but  I  feel 
perfectly  persuaded  in  my  own  mind,  that,  unless  Mr.  Robert 
Beaufort  discovered  that  paper  amongst  the  others  he  examined, 
in  one  of  those  drawers  will  be  found  all  we  went  to  substantiate 
your  claims.  This  is  the  more  likely  from  your  father  never  men- 
tioning, even  to  your  mother  apparently,  the  secret  receptacles  in 
the  bureau.  Why  else  such  mystery  ?  The  probability  is  that 
he  received  the  document  either  just  before  or  at  the  time  he 
purchased  the  bureau,  or  that  he  bought  it  for  that  very  purpose  : 
and,  having  once  deposited  the  paper  in  a  place  he  deemed 
secure  from  curiosity,  accident,  carelessness,  policy,  perhaps, 
rather  shame  itself  (pardon  me)  for  the  doubt  of  your  mother's 
discretion,  that  his  secrecy  seemed  to  imply,  kept  him  from  ever 
alluding  to  the  circumstance,  even  when  the  intimacy  of  after 
years  made  him  more  assured  of  your  mother's  self-sacrificing 
devotion  to  his  interests.  At  his  uncle's  death  he  thought  to 
repair  all !  " 

"And  how,  if  that  be  true;  if  that  Heaven  which  has 
delivered  me  hitherto  from  so  many  dangers,  has,  in  the  very 
secrecy  of  my  poor  father,  saved  my  birthright  from  the  gripe  of 
the  usurper  ;  how,  I  say,  is " 

"The  bureau  to  pass  into  our  possession?  That  is  the  diffi- 
culty. But  we  must  contrive  it  somehow,  if  all  else  fail  us; 
meanwhile,  as  I  now  feel  sure  that  there  has  been  a  copy  of  that 
register  made,  I  wish  to  know  whether  I  should  not  immediately 
cross  the  country  into  Wales,  and  see  if  I  can  find  any  person  in 

the  neighborhood  of  A who  did  examine  the  copy  taken  ; 

for,  mark  you,  the  said  copy  is  only  of  importance  as  leading  us 
to  the  testimony  of  the  actual  witness  who  took  it." 

"  Sir,"  said  Vaudemont,  heartily  shaking  Mr.  Barlow  by  the 
hand,  "  forgive  my  first  petulance.  I  see  in  you  the  very  man  I 
desired  and  wanted  ;  your  acuteness  surprises  and  encourages  me. 
Go  to  Wales,  and  God  speed  you  !  " 

"Very  well !  In  five  minutes  I  shall  be  off.  Meanwhile,  see 
the  witness  yourself ;  the  sight  of  his  benefactor's  son  will  do 
more  to  keep  him  steady  than  anything  else.  There's  his 
address,  and  take  care  not  to  give  him  money.  And  now  I  will 


382  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

order  my  chaise — the  matter  begins  to  look  worth  expense.  Oh ! 
I  forgot  to  say  that  Monsieur  Liancourt  called  on  me  yesterday 
about  his  own  affairs.  He  wishes  much  to  consult  you.  I  told 
him  you  would  probably  be  this  evening  in  town,  and  he  said  he 
would  wait  you  at  your  lodging." 

"  Yes;  I  will  lose  not  a  moment  in  going  to  London,  and  visit- 
ing our  witness.  And  he  saw  my  mother  at  the  altar  !  My  poor 
mother — Ah,  how  could  my  father  have  doubted  her  !  "  and  as  he 
spoke,  he  blushed  for  the  first  time  with  shame,  at  that  father's 
memory.  He  could  not  yet  conceive  that  one  so  frank,  one 
usually  so  bold  and  open,  could  for  years  have  preserved  from  the 
woman  who  had  sacrificed  all  to  him,  a  secret  to  her  so  impor- 
tant !  That  was,  in  fact,  the  only  blot  on  his  father's  honor — a 
foul  and  a  grave  blot  it  was.  Heavily  had  the  punishment  fallen 
on  those  whom  the  father  loved  best !  Alas,  Philip  had  not  yet 
learned  what  terrible  corrupters  are  the  Hope  and  the  Fear  of 
immense  Wealth — ay,  even  to  men  reputed  the  most  honorable, 
if  they  have  been  reared  and  pampered  in  the  belief  that  wealth 
is  the  Arch  blessing  of  life  !  Rightly  considered,  in  Philip 
Beaufort's  solitary  meanness  lay  the  vast  moral  of  this  world's 
darkest  truth  ! 

Mr.  Barlow  was  gone.  Philip  was  about  to  enter  his  own 
chaise,  when  a  dormeuse-and-four  drove  up  to  the  inn-door  to 
change  horses.  A  young  man  was  reclining,  at  his  length,  in  the 
carriage,  wrapped  in  cloaks,  and  with  a  ghastly  paleness — the 
paleness  of  long  and  deep  disease — upon  his  cheeks.  He  turned 
his  dim  eye  with,  perhaps,  a  glance  of  the  sick  man's  envy  on 
that  strong  and  athletic  form,  majestic  with  health  and  vigor,  as 
it  stood  beside  the  more  humble  vehicle.  Philip  did  not,  how- 
ever, notice  the  new  arrival ;  he  sprang  into  the  chaise,  it  rattled 
on,  and  thus,  unconsciously,  Arthur  Beaufort  and  his  cousin  had 
again  met.  To  which  was  now  the  Night — to  which  the  Morn- 
ing? 

CHAPTER  XII. 

"  Bakam. — Let  my  men  guard  the  walls. 
Syana. — And  mine  the  temple." — The  Island  Princess. 

WHILE  thus  eventfully  the  days  and  the  weeks  had  passed  for 
Philip,  no  less  eventfully,  so  far  as  the  inner  life  is  concerned, 
had  they  glided  away  for  Fanny.  She  had  feasted  in  quiet  and 
delighted  thought  on  the  consciousness  that  she  was  improving — 
that  she  was  growing  worthier  of  him — that  he  would  perceive  it 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  383 

on  his  return.  Her  manner  was  more  thoughtful,  more  collected ; 
less  childish,  in  short,  than  it  had  been.  And  yet,  with  all  the 
stir  and  flutter  of  the  aroused  intellect,  the  charm  of  her  strange 
innocence  was  not  scared  away.  She  rejoiced  in  the  ancient 
liberty  she  had  regained  of  going  out  and  coming  back  when  she 
pleased ;  and  as  the  weather  was  too  cold  ever  to  tempt  Simon 
from  his  fireside,  except,  perhaps,  for  half-an-hour  in  the  fore- 
noon, so,  the  hours  of  dusk,  when  he  least  missed  her,  were  those 
which  she  chiefly  appropriated  for  stealing  away  to  the  good 
school-mistress,  and  growing  wiser  and  wiser  every  day  in  the 
ways  of  God  and  the  learning  of  His  creatures.  The  school- 
mistress was  not  a  brilliant  woman.  Nor  was  it  accomplishments 
of  which  Fanny  stood  in  need,  so  much  as  the  opening  of  her 
thoughts  and  mind  by  profitable  books  and  rational  conversation. 
Beautiful  as  were  all  of  her  natural  feelings,  the  schoolmistress 
had  now  no  little  difficulty  in  educating  feelings  up  to  the  dignity 
of  principles. 

At  last,  hitherto  patient  under  the  absence  of  one  never  absent 
from  her  heart,  Fanny  received  from  him  the  letter  he  had 
addressed  to  her  two  days  before  he  quitted  Beaufort  Court; 
another  letter — a  second  letter — a  letter  to  excuse  himself  for  not 
coming  before — a  letter  that  gave  her  an  address,  that  asked  for 
a  reply.  It  was  a  morning  of  unequalled  delight,  approaching  to 
transport.  And  then  the  excitement  of  answering  the  letter  ;  the 
pride  of  showing  how  she  was  improved ;  what  an  excellent  hand 
she  now  wrote !  She  shut  herself  up  in  her  room :  she  did  not 
go  out  that  day.  She  placed  the  paper  before  her,  and,  to  her 
astonishment,  all  that  she  had  to  say  vanished  from  her  mind  at 
once.  How  was  she  even  to  begin  ?  She  had  always  hitherto 
called  him  "  Brother."  Ever  since  her  conversation  with  Sarah, 
she  felt  that  she  could  not  call  him  that  name  again  for  the  world 
— no,  never  !  But  what  should  she  call  him  ?  What  could  she 
call  him?  He  signed  himself  "  Philip."  She  knew  that  was  his 
name.  She  thought  it  a  musical  name  to  utter,  but  to  write  it ! 
No  !  some  instinct  she  could  not  account  for  seemed  to  whisper 
that  it  was  improper — presumptuous,  to  call  him  "  Dear  Philip." 
Had  Burns'  songs — the  songs  that  unthinkingly  he  had  put  into 
her  hand,  and  told  her  to  read ;  songs  that  comprise  the  most 
beautiful  love-poems  in  the  world — had  they  helped  to  teach  her 
some  of  the  secrets  of  her  own  heart  ?  And  had  timidity  come 
with  knowledge  ?  Who  shall  say — who  guess  what  passed  within 
her?  Nor  did  Fanny  herself,  perhaps,  know  her  own  feelings: 
but  write  the  words  "  Dear  Philip"  she  could  not.  And  the 
whole  of  that  day,  though  she  thought  of  nothing  else,  she  could 


384  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

not  even  get  through  the  first  line  to  her  satisfaction.  The  next 
morning  she  sat  down  again.  It  would  be  so  unkind  if  she  did 
not  answer  immediately  :  she  must  answer.  She  placed  his  let- 
ter before  her — she  resolutely  began.  But  copy  after  copy  was 
made  and  torn.  And  Simon  wanted  her,  and  Sarah  wanted  her, 
and  there  were  bills  to  be  paid ;  and  dinner  was  over  before  her 
task  was  really  begun.  But  after  dinner  she  began  in  good 
earnest. 

"  How  kind  in  you  to  write  to  me"  (the  difficulty  of  any  name 
was  dispensed  with  by  adopting  none),  "  and  to  wish  to  know 
about  my  dear  grandfather  !  He  is  much  the  same,  but  hardly 
ever  walks  out  now,  and  I  have  had  a  good  deal  of  time  to  myself. 
I  think  something  will  surprise  you,  and  make  you  smile,  as  you 
used  to  do  at  first,  when  you  come  back.  You  must  not  be 
angry  with  me  that  I  have  gone  out  by  myself  very  often — every 
day,  indeed.  I  have  been  so  safe.  Nobody  has  ever  offered  to 
be  rude  again  to  Fanny"  (the  word  il  Fanny"  was  here  care- 
fully scratched  out  with  a  penknife,  and  me  substituted).  "But 
you  shall  know  all  when  you  come.  And  are  you  sure  you  are 
well — quite — quite  well?  Do  you  never  have  the  headaches  you 
complained  of  sometimes?  Do  say  this !  Do  you  walk  out — 
every  day?  Is  there  any  pretty  churchyard  near  you  now? 
Whom  do  you  walk  with  ? 

"  I  have  been  so  happy  in  putting  the  flowers  on  the  two  graves, 
But  I  still  give  yours  the  prettiest,  though  the  other  is  so  dear  to 
me.  I  feel  sad  when  I  come  to  the  last,  but  not  when  I  look  at 
the  one  I  have  looked  at  so  long.  Oh,  how  good  you  were  !  But 
you  don't  like  me  to  thank  you." 

"  This  is  very  stupid  !  "  cried  Fanny,  suddenly  throwing  down 
her  pen  ;  "  and  I  don't  think  I  am  improved  at  all ;  "  and  she 
half  cried  with  vexation.  Suddenly  a  bright  idea  crossed  her. 
In  the  little  parlor  where  the  schoolmistress  privately  received 
her,  she  had  seen  among  the  books,  and  thought  at  the  time  how 
useful  it  might  be  to  her  if  ever  she  had  to  write  to  Philip,  a  lit- 
tle volume  entitled,  "The  Complete  Letter  Writer."  She  knew 
by  the  title-page  that  it  contained  models  for  every  description 
of  letter ;  no  doubt  it  would  contain  the  precise  thing  that  would 
suit  the  present  occasion.  She  started  up  at  the  notion.  She 
would  go — she  could  be  back  to  finish  the  letter  before  post-time. 
She  put  on  her  bonnet — left  the  letter,  in  her  haste,  open  on  the 
table — and,  just  looking  into  the  parlor  in  her  way  to  the  street- 
door,  to  convince  herself  that  Simon  was  asleep,  and  the  wire- 
guard  was  on  the  fire,  she  hurried  to  the  kind  schoolmistress. 

One  of  the  fogs  that  in  autumn  gather  sullenly  over 


NIGHT   AND    MOKNING.  385 

and  its  suburbs  covered  the  declining  day  with  premature  dim- 
ness. It  grew  darker  and  darker  as  she  proceeded,  but  she 
reached  the  house  in  safety.  She  spent  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in 
timidly  consulting  her  friend  about  all  kind  of  letters  except  the 
identical  one  that  she  intended  to  write,  and  having  had  it 
strongly  impressed  on  her  mind  that  if  the  letter  was  to  a  gen- 
tleman at  all  genteel,  she  ought  to  begin  "Dear  Sir,"  and  end 
witn  "I  have  the  honor  to  remain ;  "  and  that  he  would  be  ever- 
lastingly offended  if  she  did  not  in  the  address  affix  "Esquire" 
to  his  name  (that  was  a  great  discovery), — she  carried  off  the 
precious  volume,  and  quitted  the  house.  There  was  a  wall  that, 
bounding  the  demesnes  of  the  school,  ran  for  some  short  distance 
into  the  main  street.  The  increasing  fog,  here,  faintly  struggled 
against  the  glimmer  of  a  single  lamp  at  some  little  distance. 
Just  in  this  spot,  her  eye  was  caught  by  a  dark  object  in  the  road, 
which  she  could  scarcely  perceive  to  be  a  carriage,  when  her 
hand  was  seized,  and  a  voice  said  in  her  ear  : 

' '  Ah  !  you  will  not  be  so  cruel  to  me,  I  hope,  as  you  were  to 
my  messenger  !  I  have  come  myself  for  you."  . 

She  turned  in  great  alarm,  but  the  darkness  prevented  her 
recognizing  the  face  of  him  who  thus  accosted  her. 

"  Let  me  go  !  "  she  cried, — "  let  me  go  !  " 

"  Hush  !  hush  !  No — no  !  Come  with  me.  You  shall  have  a 
house — carriage — servants  !  You  shall  wear  silk  gowns  and  jew- 
els !  You  shall  be  a  great  lady !  " 

As  these  various  temptations  succeeded  in  rapid  course  each 
new  struggle  of  Fanny,  a  voice  from  the  coach-box  said,  in  a  low 
tone : 

"Take  care,  my  lord,  I  see  somebody  coming — perhaps  a 
policeman !  ' ' 

Fanny  heard  the  caution,  and  screamed  for  rescue. 

"Is  it  so ? "  muttered  the  molester.  And  suddenly  Fanny 
felt  her  voice  checked — her  head  mantled — her  light  form  lifted 
from  the  ground.  She  clung — she  struggled — it  was  in  vain.  It 
was  the  affair  of  a  moment ;  she  felt  herself  borne  into  the  car- 
riage— the  door  closed — the  stranger  was  by  her  side,  and  his 
voice  said  : 

"  Drive  on,  Dykeman.     Fast  !  fast  !  " 

Two  or  three  minutes,  which  seemed  to  her  terror  as  ages, 
elapsed,  when  the  gag  and  the  mantle  were  gently  removed,  and 
the  same  voice  (she  still  could  not  see  her  companion)  said,  in  a 
very  mild  tone : 

"  Do  not  alarm  yourself  ;  there  is  no  cause, — indeed  there  is 
not.  I  would  not  have  adopted  this  plan  had  there  been  any 
af 


386  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

other — any  gentle  one.  But  I  could  not  call  at  your  own  house  ; 
I  knew  no  other  where  to  meet  you.  This  was  the  only  course 
left  to  me — indeed  it  was.  I  made  myself  acquainted  with  your 
movements.  Do  not  blame  me,  then,  for  prying  into  your  foot- 
steps. I  watched  for  you  all  last  night — you  did  not  come  out. 
I  was  in  despair.  At  last  I  find  you.  Do  not  be  so  terrified  :  I 
will  not  even  touch  your  hand  if  you  do  not  wish  it." 

As  he  spoke,  however,  he  attempted  to  touch  it  and  was  repulsed 
with  an  energy  that  rather  disconcerted  him.  The  poor  girl 
recoiled  from  him  into  the  farthest  corner  of  that  prison  in  speech- 
less horror — in  the  darkest  confusion  of  ideas.  She  did  not  weep 
— she  did  not  sob — but  her  trembling  seemed  to  shake  the  very 
carriage.  The  man  continued  to  address,  to  expostulate,  to  pray, 
to  soothe.  His  manner  was  respectful.  His  protestations  that  he 
would  not  harm  her  for  the  world  were  endless. 

' '  Only  just  see  the  home  I  can  give  you  ;  for  two  days — for  one 
day.  Only  just  hear  how  rich  I  can  make  you  and  your  grand- 
father, and  then,  if  you  wish  to  leave  me,  you  shall." 

More,  much  more,  to  this  effect,  did  he  continue  to  pour  forth, 
without  extracting  any  sound  from  Fanny  but  gasps  as  for  breath, 
and  now  and  then  a  low  murmur : 

"  Let  me  go,  let  me  go!  My  grandfather,  my  blind  grand- 
father!" 

And  finally  tears  came  to  her  relief,  and  she  sobbed  with  a  pas- 
sion that  alarmed,  and  perhaps  even  touched,  her  companion, 
cynical  and  icy  as  he  was.  Meanwhile  the  carriage  seemed  to 
fly.  Fast  as  two  horses,  thoroughbred,  and  almost  at  full  speed, 
could  go,  they  were  whirled  along,  till  about  an  hour,  or  even 
less,  from  the  time  in  which  she  had  been  thus  captured,  the  car- 
riage stopped. 

''Are  we  here  already?  "  said  the  man,  putting  his  head  out  of 
the  window.  ' '  Do  then  as  I  told  you.  Not  to  the  front  door : 
to  my  study.'" 

In  two  minutes  more  the  carriage  halted  again  before  a  build- 
ing, which  looked  white  and  ghostlike  through  the  mist.  The 
driver  dismounted,  opened  with  a  latch-key  a  window-door, 
entered  for  a  moment  to  light  the  candles  in  a  solitary  room  from 
a  fire  that  blazed  on  the  hearth,  reappeared,  and  opened  the  car- 
riage-door. It  was  with  a  difficulty  for  which  they  were  scarcely 
prepared  that  they  were  enabled  to  get  Fanny  from  the  carriage. 
No  soft  words,  no  whispered  prayers,  could  draw  her  forth ;  and 
it  was  with  no  trifling  address,  for  her  companion  sought  to  be  as 
gentle  as  the  force  necessary  to  employ  would  allow,  that  he  disen- 
gaged her  hands  from  the  window-frame,  the  lining,  the  cushions., 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  387 

to  which  they  clung ;  and  at  last  bore  her  into  the  house.  The 
driver  closed  the  window  again  as  he  retreated,  and  they  were 
alone.  Fanny  then  cast  a  wild,  scarce  conscious  glance  over  the 
apartment.  It  was  small  and  simply  furnished.  Opposite  to  her 
was  an  old-fashioned  bureau,  one  of  those  quaint,  elaborate  mon- 
uments of  Dutch  ingenuity,  which,  during  the  present  centurys 
the  audacious  spirit  of  curiosity-vendors  has  transplanted  from 
their  native  receptacles,  to  contrast,  with  grotesque  strangeness, 
the  neat  handiwork  of  Gillow  and  Seddon.  It  had  a  physiog- 
nomy and  character  of  its  own — this  fantastic  foreigner  !  Inlaid 
with  mosaics,  depicting  landscapes  and  animals ;  graceless  in  form 
and  fashion,  but  still  picturesque,  and  winning  admiration,  when 
more  closely  observed  from  the  patient  defiance  of  all  rules  of 
taste  which  had  formed  its  cumbrous  parts  into  one  profusely 
ornamented  and  eccentric  whole.  It  was  the  more  noticeable 
from  its  total  want  of  harmony  with  the  other  appurtenances  of 
the  room,  which  bespoke  the  tastes  of  the  plain  English  squire. 
Prints  of  horses  and  hunts,  fishing-rods  and  fowling-pieces,  care- 
fully suspended,  decorated  the  walls.  Not,  however,  on  this  not- 
able stranger  from  the  sluggish  land,  rested  the  eye  of  Fanny. 
That,  in  her  hurried  survey,  was  arrested  only  by  a  portrait 
placed  over  the  bureau — the  portrait  of  a  female  in  the  bloom  of 
life ;  a  face  so  fair,  a  brow  so  candid,  an  eye  so  pure,  a  lip  so  rich 
in  youth  and  joy,  that  as  her  look  lingered  on  the  features,  Fanny 
felt  comforted  ;  felt  as  if  some  living  protrectress  were  there.  The 
fire  burned  bright  and  merrily ;  a  table  spread  as  for  dinner,  was 
drawn  near  it.  To  any  other  eye  but  Fanny's  the  place  would 
have  seemed  a  picture  of  English  comfort.  *  At  last  her  looks 
rested  on  her  companion.  He  had  thrown  himself,  with  a  long 
sigh,  partly  of  fatigue,  partly  of  satisfaction  on  one  of  the  chairs, 
and  was  contemplating  her  as  she  thus  stood  and  gazed,  with  an 
expression  of  mingled  curiosity  and  admiration ;  she  recognized 
at  once  her  first,  her  only  persecutor.  She  recoiled,  and  covered 
her  face  with  her  hands.  The  man  approached  her : 

" Do  not  hate  me,  Fanny;  do  not  turn  away.  Believe  me, 
though  I  have  acted  thus  violently,  here  all  violence  will  cease. 
I  love  you,  but  I  will  not  be  satisfied  till  you  love  me  in  return. 
I  am  not  young,  and  I  am  not  handsome,  but  I  am  rich  and  great, 
and  I  can  make  those  whom  I  love  happy, — so  happy,  Fanny  !  " 

But  Fanny  had  turned  away,  and  was  now  busily  employed  in 
trying  to  re-open  the  door  at  which  she  had  entered.  Failing  in 
this,  she  suddenly  darted  away,  opened  the  inner  door,  and  rushed 
into  the  passage  with  a  loud  cry.  Her  persecutor  stifled  an  oath, 


388  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

and  sprung  after  and  arrested  her.     He  now  spoke  sternly,  and 
with  a  smile  and  a  frown  at  once : 

"This  is  folly ;  come  back,  or  you  will  repent  it  !  I  have  prom- 
ised you,  as  a  gentleman — as  a  nobleman,  if  you  know  what  that 
is,  to  respect  you.  But  neither  will  I  myself  be  trifled  with  nor 
insulted.  There  must  be  no  screams  !  " 

His  look  and  his  voice  awed  Fanny  in  spite  of  her  bewilder- 
ment and  her  loathing,  and  she  suffered  herself  passively 
to  be  drawn  into  the  room.  He  closed  and  bolted  the  door. 
She  threw  herself  on  the  ground  in  one  corner,  and  moaned 
low  but  piteously.  He  looked  at  her  musingly  for  some  mo- 
ments, as  he  stood  by  the  fire,  and  at  last  went  to  the  door, 
opened  it,  and  called  "Harriet"  in  a  low  voice.  Presently 
a  young  woman,  of  about  thirty,  appeared,  neatly  but  plainly 
dressed,  and  of  a  countenance  that,  if  not  very  winning,  might 
certainly  be  called  very  handsome.  He  drew  her  aside  for  a  few 
moments  and  a  whispered  conference  was  exchanged.  He  then 
walked  gravely  up  to  Fanny : 

"  My  young  friend,"  said  he,  "  I  see  my  presence  is  too  much 
for  you  this  evening.  This  young  woman  will  attend  you — will 
get  you  all  you  want.  She  can  tell  you,  too,  that  I  am  not  the 
terrible  sort  of  person  you  seem  to  suppose.  1  shall  see  you  to- 
morrow." So  saying,  he  turned  on  his  heel  and  walked  out. 

Fanny  felt  something  like  liberty,  something  like  joy,  again. 
She  rose,  and  looked  so  pleadingly,  so  earnestly,  so  intently  into 
the  woman's  face, that  Harriet  turned  away  her  bold  eyes  abashed  ; 
and  at  this  moment  Dykeman  himself  looked  into  the  room. 

"  You  are  to  bring  us  in  dinner  here  yourself,  uncle;  and  then 
go  to  my  lord  in  the  drawing-room." 

Dykeman  looked  pleased,  and  vanished.  Then  Harriet  came 
up  and  took  Fanny's  hand,  and  said  kindly  : 

"Don't  be  frightened.  I  assure  you,  half  the  girls  in  London 
would  give  I  don't  know  what  to  be  in  your  place.  My  lord 
never  will  force  you  to  do  anything  you  don't  like — it's  not  his 
way ;  and  he's  the  kindest  and  best  man,  and  so  rich ;  he  does 
not  know  what  to  do  with  his  money  !  " 

To  all  this  Fanny  made  but  one  answer, — she  threw  herself 
suddenly  upon  the  woman's  breast,  and  sobbed  out : 

"  My  grandfather  is  blind,  he  cannot  do  without  me  ;  he  will 
die — die.  Have  you  nobody  you  love,  too  ?  Let  me  go — let 
me  out !  What  can  they  want  with  me  ?  I  never  did  harm  to  any 
one." 

"And  no  one  will  harm  you;  I  swear  it!"  said  Harriet, 
earnestly.  "  I  see  you  don't  know  my  lord.  But  here's  the  din- 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  389 

ner,  come  and  take  a  bit  of  something,  and  a  glass  of  wine." 
Fanny  could  not  touch  anything  except  a  glass  of  water,  and 
that  nearly  choked  her.  But  at  last,  as  she  recovered  her  senses, 
the  absence  of  her  tormentor — the  presence  of  a  woman — the 
solemn  assurances  of  Harriet  that,  if  she  did  not  like  to  stay 
there,  after  a  day  or  two  she  should  go  back,  tranquillized  her  in 
some  measure.  She  did  not  heed  the  artful  and  lengthened  eulo- 
giums  that  the  she-tempter  then  proceeded  to  pour  forth  upon  the 
virtues,  and  the  love,  and  the  generosity,  and,  above  all,  the 
money  of  my  lord.  She  only  kept  repeating  to  herself,  "  I  shall 
go  back  in  a  day  or  two."  At  length,  Harriet,  having  ate  and 
drank  as  much  as  she  could  by  her  single  self,  and  growing  wear- 
ied with  efforts  from  which  so  little  resulted,  proposed  to  Fanny 
to  retire  to  rest.  She  opened  a  door  to  the  right  of  the  fireplace, 
and  lighted  her  up  a  winding  staircase  to  a  pretty  and  comfortable 
chamber,  where  she  offered  to  help  her  to  undress.  Fanny's  com- 
plete innocence,  and  her  utter  ignorance  of  the  precise  nature  of  the 
danger  that  awaited  her,  though  she  fancied  it  must  be  very  great  and 
very  awful,  prevented  her  quite  comprehending  all  that  Harriet 
meant  to  convey  by  her  solemn  assurances  that  she  should  not  be 
disturbed.  But  she  understood,  at  least,  that  she  was  not  to  see  her 
hateful  gaoler  till  the  next  morning ;  and  when  Harriet,  wishing 
her  "good  night,"  showed  her  a  bolt  to  her  door,  she  was  less 
terrified  at  the  thought  of  being  alone  in  that  strange  place.  She 
listened  till  Harriet's  footsteps  had  died  away,  and  then,  with  a 
beating  heart,  tried  to  open  the  door ;  it  was  locked  from  without. 
She  sighed  heavily.  The  window  ?  Alas  !  when  she  had  removed 
the  shutter,  there  was  another  one  barred  from  without,  which 
precluded  all  hope  there ;  she  had  no  help  for  it  but  to  bolt  her 
door,  stand  forlorn  and  amazed  at  her  own  condition,  and,  at 
last,  falling  on  her  knees,  to  pray,  in  her  own  simple  fashion, 
which  since  her  recent  visits  to  the  schoolmistress  had  become 
more  intelligent  and  earnest,  to  Him  from  whom  no  bolts  and  no 
bars  can  exclude  the  voice  of  the  human  heart, 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
"  In  te  omnis  domus  inclinata  recumbit  "* — VIRGIL. 

LORD  LILBURNE,  seated  before  a  tray  in  the  drawing-room, 
was  finishing  his  own  solitary  dinner,  and  Dykeman  was  standing 
close  beside  him,  nervous  and  agitated.  The  confidence  of  many 

*  On  thee  the  whole  house  rests  confiding!}. 


390  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

years  between  the  master  and  servant — the  peculiar  mind  of  Lii- 
burne,  which  excluded  him  from  all  friendship  with  his  own 
-equals — had  established  between  the  two  the  kind  of  intimacy  so 
common  with  the  noble  and  the  valet  of  the  old  French  regime  ; 
indeed  in  much,  Lilburne  more  resembled  the  men  of  that  day 
and  land,  than  he  did  the  nobler  and  statelier  being  which 
belongs  to  our  own.  But  to  the  end  of  time,  whatever  is  at  once 
vicious,  polished,  and  intellectual,  will  have  a  common  likeness. 

"  But,  my  lord,"  said  Dykeman,  "  just  reflect.  This  girl  is  so 
well  known  in  the  place;  she  will  be  sure  to  be  missed;  and  if 
any  violence  is  done  her,  it's  a  capital  crime,  my  lord — a  capital 
crime.  I  know  they  can't  hang  a  great  lord  like  you,  but  all  con- 
cerned in  it  may — " 

Lord  Lilburne  interrupted  the  speaker  by  :  "  Give  me  some 
wine  and  hold  your  tongue  !  "  Then,  when  he  had  emptied  his 
glass,  he  drew  himself  nearer  the  fire,  warmed  his  hands,  mused 
a  moment,  and  turned  round  to  his  confidant: 

"  Dykeman,"  said  he,  "  though  you  are  an  ass  and  a  coward, 
and  you  don't  deserve  that  I  should  be  so  condescending,  I  will 
relieve  your  fears  at  once.  I  know  the  law  better  than  you  can,  for 
my  whole  life  has  been  spent  in  doing  exactly  as  I  please,  without 
ever  putting  myself  in  the  power  of  LAW,  which  interferes  with  the 
pleasure  of  other  men.  You  are  right  in  saying  violence  would 
be  a  capital  crime.  Now  the  difference  between  vice  and  crime 
is  this :  Vice  is  what  parsons  write  sermons  against.  Crime  is 
what  we  make  laws  against.  I  never  committed  a  crime  in  all 
my  life, — at  an  age  between  fifty  and  sixty  I  am  not  going  to 
begin.  Vices  are  safe  things ;  I  may  have  my  vices  like  other 
men  :  but  crimes  are  dangerous  things — illegal  things — things  to 
be  carefully  avoided.  Look  you,"  (and  here  the  speaker,  fixing 
his  puzzled  listener  with  his  eye,  broke  into  a  grin  of  sublime 
mockery),  (( let  me  suppose  you  to  be  the  World — that  cringing 
valet  of  valets,  the  WORLD  !  I  should  say  to  you  this ;  '  My 
dear  World,  you  and  I  understand  each  other  well ;  we  are  made 
for  each  other ;  I  never  come  in  your  way,  nor  you  in  mine.  If  I 
get  drunk  every  day  in  my  own  room,  that's  vice,  you  can't  touch 
me ;  if  I  take  an  extra  glass  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  and 
knock  down  the  watchman,  that's  a  crime  which,  if  I  am  rich, 
costs  me  one  pound — perhaps  five  pounds ;  if  I  am  poor,  sends 
me  to  the  treadmill.  If  I  break  the  hearts  of  five  hundred  old 
fathers,  by  buying  with  gold  or  flattery  the  embraces  of  five  hun- 
dred young  daughters,  that's  vice, — your  servant,  Mr.  World  ! 
If  one  termagant  wench  scratches  my  face,  makes  a  noise,  and 
goes  brazen-faced  to  the  Old  Bailey  to  swear  to  her  shame,  why 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  30V 

that's  crime,  and  my  friend,  Mr.  World,  pulls  a  hemp-rope  out 
of  his  pocket.'  Now  do  you  understand!  Yes,  I  repeat,"  he 
added,  with  a  change  of  voice,  "  I  never  committed  a  crime  in 
my  life  ;  I  have  never  even  been  accused  of  one ;  never  had  an 
action  of  crim.  con. — of  seduction,  against  me.  I  know  how  to 
manage  such  matters  better.  I  was  forced  to  carry  off  this  girl, 
because  I  had  no  other  means  of  courting  her.  To  court  her  is 
all  I  mean  to  do  now.  I  am  perfectly  aware  that  an  Action  for 
violence,  as  you  call  it,  would  be  the  more  disagreeable,  because 
of  the  very  weakness  of  intellect  which  the  girl  is  said  to  possess, 
and  of  which  report  I  don't  believe  a  word.  I  shall,  most  certainly, 
avoid  even  the  remotest  appearance  that  could  be  so  construed. 
It  is  for  that  reason  that  no  one  in  the  house  shall  attend  the  girl  ex- 
cept youself  and  your  niece.  Your  niece  I  can  depend  on,  I  know ; 
I  have  been  kind  to  her ;  I  have  got  her  a  good  husband :  I  shall 
get  her  husband  a  good  place  ;  I  shall  be  godfather  to  her  first 
child.  To  be  sure,  the  other  servants  will  know  there's  a  lady  in 
the  house,  but  to  that  they  are  accustomed ;  I  don't  set  up  for  a 
Joseph.  They  need  know  no  more,  unless  you  choose  to  blab  it 
out.  Well,  then,  supposing  that  at  the  end  of  a  few  days,  more  or 
less,  without  any  rudeness  on  my  part,  a  young  woman,  after  see- 
ing a  few  jewels,  and  fine  dresses,  and  a  pretty  house,  and  being 
made  very  comfortable,  and  being  convinced  that  her  grandfather 
shall  be  taken  care  of  without  her  slaving  herself  to  death,  chooses 
of  her  own  accord  to  live  with  me,  where's  the  crime,  and  who 
can  interfere  with  it?  " 

"  Certainly,  my  lord,  that  alters  the  case,"-said  Dykeman,  con- 
siderably relieved.  "But  still,"  he  added,  anxiously,  "if  inquiry 
is  made;  if  before  all  this  is  settled,  it  is  found  out  where  she 
is?" 

"  Why  then  no  harm  will  be  done ;  no  violence  will  be  com- 
mitted. Her  grandfather, — drivelling  and  a  miser,  you  say, — 
can  be  appeased  by  a  little  money,  and  it  will  be  nobody's  busi- 
ness, and  no  case  can  be  made  of  it.  Tush  !  man  !  I  always 
look  before  I  leap  !  People  in  this  world  are  not  so  charitable  as 
you  suppose.  What  more  natural  than  that  a  poor  and  pretty 
girl — not  as  wise  as  Queen  Elizabeth — should  be  tempted  to  pay 
a  visit  to  a  rich  lover  !  All  they  can  say  of  the  lover  is,  that  he 
is  a  very  gay  man  or  a  very  bad  man,  and  that's  saying  nothing  new 
of  me.  But  I  don't  think  it  will  be  found  out.  Just  get  me  that 
stool ;  this  has  been  a  very  troublesome  piece  of  business — rather 
tired  me.  I  am  not  so  young  as  I  was.  Yes,  Dykeman,  some- 
thing which  that  Frenchman  Vaudemont  or  Vaut-rien,  or  what- 
ever his  name  is,  said  to  me  once,  has  a  certain  degree  of  truth. 


392  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

I  felt  it  in  the  last  fit  of  the  gout,  when  my  pretty  niece  was  smooth* 
ing  my  pillows.     A  nurse,  as  we  grow  older,  may  be  of  use  to 
one.     I  wish  to  make  this  girl  like  me,  or  be  grateful  to  me.     I 
am  meditating  a  longer  and  more  serious  attachment  than  usual 
— a  companion  !  " 

"A  companion,  my  lord,  in  that  poor  creature  1  So  ignorant 
— so  uneducated  !  " 

"  So  much  the  better.  This  world  palls  upon  me,"  said  Lil- 
burne  almost  gloomily.  "  I  grow  sick  of  the  miserable  quacker- 
ies— of  the  piteous  conceits  that  men,  women,  and  children,  call 
"knowledge."  I  wish  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  nature  before  I  die. 
This  creature  interests  me,  and  that  is  something  in  this  life. 
Clear  those  things  away,  and  leave  me." 

"Ay?"  muttered  Lilburne,  as  he  bent  over  the  fire  alone, 
"  when  I  first  heard  that  that  girl  was  the  granddaughter  of  Simon 
Gawtrey,  and,  therefore,  the  child  of  the  man  whom  I  am  to 
thank  that  I  am  a  cripple,  I  felt  as  if  love  to  her  were  a  part  of 
that  hate  which  I  owe  to  him ;  a  segment  in  the  circle  of  my  ven- 
geance. But  now,  poor  child  !  I  forget  all  this.  I  feel  for  her, 
not  passion,  but  what  I  never  felt  before,  affection.  I  feel  that  if 
I  ever  had  such  a  child,  I  could  understand  what  men  mean  when 
they  talk  of  the  tenderness  of  a  father.  I  have  not  one  impure 
thought  for  that  girl — not  one.  But  I  would  give  thousands  if  she 
could  love  me.  Strange  !  strange !  in  all  this  I  do  not  recognize 
myself!" 

Lord  Lilburne  retired  to  rest  betimes  that  night;  he  slept 
sound  ;  rose  refreshed  at  an  earlier  hour  than  usual ;  and  what  he 
considered  a  fit  of  vapors  of  the  previous  night  was  passed  away. 
He  looked  with  eagerness  to  an  interview  with  Fanny.  Proud  of 
his  intellect,  pleased  in  any  of  those  sinister  exercises  of  it  which 
the  code  and  habits  of  his  life  so  long  permitted  to  him,  he 
regarded  the  conquest  of  his  fair  adversary  with  the  interest  of  a 
scientific  game.  Harriet  went  to  Fanny's  room  to  prepare  her  to 
receive  her  host ;  and  Lord  Lilburne  now  resolved  to  make  his 
own  visit  the  less  unwelcome,  by  reserving  for  his  especial  gift 
some  showy,  if  not  valuable,  trinkets,  which  for  similar  purposes 
never  failed  the  depositories  of  the  villa,  he  had  purchased  for  his 
pleasures.  He  recollected  that  these  gewgaws  were  placed  in  the 
bureau  in  the  study  ;  in  which,  as  having  a  lock  of  foreign  and 
intricate  workmanship,  he  usually  kept  whatever  might  tempt 
cupidity  in  those  frequent  absences  when  the  house  was  left  guarded 
but  by  two  women  servants.  Finding  that  Fanny  had  not  yet 
quitted  her  own  chamber,  while  Harriet  went  up  to  attend  and 
reason  with  her,  he  himself  limped  into  the  study  below,  unlocked 


NIGHT  AND  MORNING.  393 

the  bureau,  and  was  searching  in  the  drawers,  when  he  heard  the 
voice  of  Fanny  above,  raised  a  little  as  if  in  remonstrance  or 
entreaty  ;  and  he  paused  to  listen.  He  could  not,  however,  dis- 
tinguish what  was  said ;  and  in  the  meanwhile,  without  attending 
much  to  what  he  was  about,  his  hands  were  still  employed  in 
opening  and  shutting  the  drawers,  passing  through  the  pigeon- 
holes, and  feeling  for  a  topaz  brooch,  which  he  thought  could  not 
fail  of  pleasing  the  unsophisticated  eyes  of  Fanny.  One  of  the 
recesses  was  deeper  than  the  rest ;  he  fancied  the  brooch  was 
there ;  he  stretched  his  hand  into  the  recess ;  and,  as  the  room 
was  partially  darkened  by  the  lower  shutters  from  without,  which 
were  still  unclosed  to  prevent  any  attempted  escape  of  his  captive, 
he  had  only  the  sense  of  touch  to  depend  on ;  not  finding  the 
brooch,  he  stretched  on  till  he  came  to  the  extremity  of  the  recess, 
and  was  suddenly  sensible  of  a  sharp  pain;  the  flesh  seemed 
caught  as  in  a  trap ;  he  drew  back  his  finger  with  a  sudden  force 
and  a  half-suppressed  exclamation,  and  he  perceived  the  bottom 
or  floor  of  the  pigeon-hole  recede,  as  if  sliding  back.  His  curi- 
osity was  aroused ;  he  again  felt  warily  and  cautiously,  and  dis- 
covered a  very  slight  inequality  and  roughness  at  the  extremity  of 
the  recess.  He  was  aware  instantly  that  there  was  some  secret 
spring  ;  he  pressed  with  some  some  force  on  the  spot,  and  he  felt 
the  board  give  way  ;  he  pushed  it  back  towards  him,  and  it  slid 
suddenly  with  a  whirring  noise,  and  left  a  cavity  below  exposed 
to  his  sight.  He  peered  in,  and  drew  forth  a  paper ;  he  opened 
it  at  first  carelessly,  for  he  was  still  trying  to  listen  to  Fanny.  His 
eye  ran  rapidly  over  a  few  preliminary  lines  till  it  rested  on  what 
follows : 

"Marriage.         The  year  18 — 
"  No.  83,  page  21. 

"  Philip  Beaufort,  of  this  parish  of  A ,  and  Catherine  Mor- 
ton, of  the  parish  of  St.  Botolph,  Aldgate,  London,  were  married 
in  this  church  by  banns,  this  1 2th  day  of  November,  in  the  year 

one  thousand  eight  hundred  and ,*  by  me. 

CALEB  PRICE,  Vicar. 
"This  marriage  was  solemnized  between  us, 

"PHILIP  BEAUFORT. 
"  CATHERINE  MORTON. 
"  In  the  presence  of 

"  DAVID  APREECE. 
"  WILLIAM  SMITH. 

*  This  is  according  to  the  form  customary  at  the  date  at  which  the  copy  was  made. 
There  has  since  been  an  alteration. 


394  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

"  The  above  is  a  true  copy  taken  from  the  registry  of  mar- 
riages, in  A parish,  this  igth  day  of  March,  18 — ,  by  me. 

' '  MORGAN  JONES,  Curate  of  C . ' ' 

Lord  Lilburne  again  cast  his  eye  over  the  lines  prefixed  to  this 
startling  document,  which,  being  those  written  at  Caleb's  desire, 
by  Mr.  Jones  to  Philip  Beaufort,  we  need  not  here  transcribe  to 
the  reader.*  At  that  instant,  Harriet  descended  the  stairs,  and 
came  into  the  room;  she  crept  up  on  tiptoe  to  Lilburne,  and 
whispered : 

"  She  is  coming  down,  I  think;  she  does  not  know  you  are 
here." 

"  Very  well — go  ?  "  said  Lord  Lilburne.  And  scarce  had  Har- 
riet left  the  room,  when  a  carriage  drove  furiously  to  the  door, 
and  Robert  Beaufort  rushed  into  the  study. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

"  Gone,  and  none  know  it. 

****** 

How  now  ? — What  news,  what  hopes  and  steps  discovered !  " 

BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  :  The  Pilgrim. 

WHEN  Philip  arrived  at  his  lodgings  in  town  it  was  very  late, 
but  he  still  found  Liancourt  waiting  the  chance  of  his  arrival. 
The  Frenchman  was  full  of  his  own  schemes  and  projects.  He 
•was  a  man  of  high  repute  and  connections ;  negoiations  for  his 
recall  to  Paris  had  been  entered  into ;  he  was  divided  between  a 
Quixotic  loyalty  and  a  rational  prudence  ;  he  brought  his  doubts 
to  Vaudemont.  Occupied  as  he  was  with  thoughts  of  so  import- 
ant and  personal  a  nature,  Philip  could  yet  listen  patiently  to  his 
friend,  and  weigh  with  him  the  pros  and  cons.  And  after  having 
mutually  agreed  that  loyalty  and  prudence  would  both  be  best 
consulted  by  waiting  a  little,  to  see  if  the  nation,  as  the  Carlists 
yet  fondly  trusted,  would  soon,  after  its  first  fever,  offer  once 
more  the  throne  and  the  purple  to  the  descendant  of  St.  Louis, 
Liancourt,  as  he  lighted  his  cigar  to  walk  home,  said  :  "A  thou- 
sand thanks  to  you,  my  dear  friend  :  and  how  have  you  enjoyed 
yourself  in  your  visit?  I  am  not  surprised  or  jealous  that  Lil- 
burne did  not  invite  me,  as  I  do  not  play  at  cards,  and  as  I  have 
said  some  sharp  things  to  him." 

"I  fancy  I  shall  have  the  same  disqualifications  for  another 
invitation,"  said  Vaudemont,  with  a  severe  smile.  "  I  may  have 

*  Ste  page  21. 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  395 

much  to  disclose  to  you  in  a  few  days.  At  present  my  news  is 
still  unripe.  And  have  you  seen  anything  of  Lilburne;  he  left 
us  some  days  since.  Is  he  in  London  ?  " 

"  Yes  ;  I  was  riding  with  our  friend  Henri,  who  wished  to  try 
a  new  horse  off  the  stones,  a  little  way  into  the  country  yesterday. 

We  went  through and  H .  Pretty  places,  those.  Do  you 

know  them  ?" 

"Yes;  I  know  H ." 

"  And  just  at  dusk,  as  we  were  spurring  back  to  town,  whom 
should  I  see  walking  on  the  path  of  the  highroad  but  Lord  Lil- 
burne himself!  I  could  hardly  believe  my  eyes.  I  stopped,  and, 
after  asking  him  about  you,  I  could  not  help  expressing  my  sur- 
prise to  see  him  on  foot  at  such  a  place.  You  know  the  man's 
sneer.  '  A  Frenchman  so  gallant  as  Monsieur  de  Liancourt,'  said 
he,  '  need  not  be  surprised  at  much  greater  miracles ;  the  iron 
moves  to  the  magnet :  I  have  a  little  adventure  here.  Pardon 
me,  if  I  ask  you  to  ride  on.'  Of  course  I  wished  him  good-day, 
and  a  little  farther  up  the  road  I  saw  a  dark  plain  chariot,  no 
coronet,  no  arms,  no  footman — only  the  man  on  the  box — but  the 
beauty  of  the  horses  assured  me  it  must  belong  to  Lilburne.  Can 
you  conceive  such  absurdity  in  a  man  of  that  age — and  a  very 
clever  fellow,  too  ?  Yet,  how  is  it  that  one  does  not  ridicule  it 
in  Lilburne,  as  one  would  in  another  man  between  fifty  and 
sixty?" 

"Because  one  does  not  ridicule — one  loathes — him." 

"  No;  that's  not  it.  The  fact  is,  that  one  can't  fancy  Lilburne 
old.  His  manner  is  young ;  his  eye  is  young.  I  never  saw  any 
one  with  so  much  vitality.  '  The  bad  heart  and  the  good  diges- 
tion ' — the  twin  secrets  for  wearing  well,  eh  !  " 

"  Where  did  you  meet  him — not  near  H ?  " 

"Yes;  close  by.  Why?  Have  you  any  adventure  there, 
too?  Nay,  forgive  me  ;  it  was  but  a  jest.  Good-night !  " 

Vaudemont  fell  into  an  uneasy  reverie ;  he  could  not  divine 
exactly  why  he  should  be  alarmed  ;  but  he  was  alarmed  at  Lil- 
burne being  in  the  neighborhood  of  H .  It  was  the  foot  of 

the  profane  violating  the  sanctuary.  An  undefined  thrill  shot 
through  him,  as  his  mind  coupled  together  the  associations  of 
Lilburne  and  Fanny ;  but  there  was  no  ground  for  forebodings. 
Fanny  did  not  stir  out  alone.  An  adventure,  too — pooh  !  Lord 
Lilburne  must  be  awaiting  a  willing  and  voluntary  appointment, 
most  probably  from  some  one  of  the  fair  but  decorous  frailities  in 
London.  Lord  Lilburne's  more  recent  conquests  were  said  to  be 
among  those  of  his  own  rank ;  suburbs  are  useful  for  such  assig- 
nations. Any  other  thought  was  too  horrible  to  be  contemplated. 


396  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

He  glanced  to  the  clock  ;  it  was  three  in  the  morning.  He 

would  go  to  H early,  even  before  he  sought  out  Mr.  William 

Smith.  With  that  resolution,  and  even  his  hardy  frame  worn  out 
by  the  excitement  of  the  day,  he  threw  himself  on  his  bed  and 
fell  asleep. 

He  did  not  wake  till  near  nine,  and  had  just  dressed,  and  hur- 
ried over  his  abstemious  breakfast,  when  the  servant  of  the  house 
came  to  tell  him  that  an  old  woman,  apparently  in  great  agita- 
tion, wished  to  see  him.  His  head  was  still  full  of  witnesses  and 
lawsuits;  and  he  was  vaguely  expecting  some  visitor  connected 
with  his  primary  objects,  when  Sarah  broke  into  the  room.  She 
cast  a  hurried,  suspicious  look  round  her,  and  then,  throwing  her- 
self on  her  knees  to  him,  "  Oh  !  "  she  cried,  "  if  you  have  taken 
that  poor  young  thing  away,  God  forgive  you.  Let  her  come 
back  again.  It  shall  be  all  hushed  up.  Don't  ruin  her  !  don't  ! 
that's  a  dear,  good  gentleman  !  " 

"Speak  plainly,  woman, — what  do  you  mean?"  cried  Philip, 
turning  pale. 

A  very  few  words  sufficed  for  an  explanation :  Fanny's  disap- 
pearance the  previous  night;  the  alarm  of  Sarah  at  her  non- 
return ;  the  apathy  of  old  Simon,  who  did  not  comprehend  what 
had  happened,  and  quietly  went  to  bed ;  the  search  Sarah  had 
made  during  half  the  night ;  the  intelligence  she  had  picked  up, 
that  the  policeman,  going  his  rounds,  had  heard  a  female  shriek 
near  the  school ;  but  that  all  he  could  perceive  through  the  mist 
was  a  carriage  driving  rapidly  past  him  ;  Sarah's  suspicions  of 
Vaudemont  confirmed  in  the  morning,  when,  entering  Fanny's 
room,  she  perceived  the  poor  girl's  unfinished  letter  with  his  own, 
the  clue  to  his  address  that  the  latter  gave  her  ;  all  this,  ere  she 
well  understood  what  she  herself  was  talking  about,  Vaudemont's 
alarm  seized,  and  the  reflection  of  a  moment  construed  :  The 
carriage ;  Lilburne  seen  lurking  in  the  neighborhood  the  previous 
day;  the  former  attempt; — all  flashed  on  him  with  an  intolerable 
glare.  While  Sarah  was  yet  speaking,  he  rushed  from  the  house, 
he  flew  to  Lord  Lilburne's  in  Park  Lane,  he  composed  his  man- 
ner, he  inquired  calmly.  His  lordship  had  slept  from  home ;  he 

was,  they  believed,  at  Fernside :  Fernside !  H was  on  the 

direct  way  to  that  villa !  Scarcely  ten  minutes  had  elapsed  since 
he  heard  the  story  ere  he  was  on  the  road,  with  such  speed  as  the 
promise  of  a  guinea  a  mile  could  extract  from  the  spurs  of  a 
young  post-boy  applied  to  the  flanks  of  London  post-horses. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  397 

CHAPTER  XV. 

"  Ex  humili  magna  ad  fastigia  rerum 
Extollit."  * — JUVENAL. 

WHEN  Harriet  had  quitted  Fanny,  the  waiting-woman,  craftily 
wishing  to  lure  her  into  Lilburne's  presence,  had  told  her  that  the 
room  below  was  empty;  and  the  captive's  mind  naturally  and 
instantly  seized  on  the  thought  of  escape.  After  a  brief  breathing 
pause,  she  crept  noislessly  down  the  stairs,  and  gently  opened  the 
door ;  and  at  the  very  instant  she  did  so,  Robert  Beaufort  entered 
from  the  other  door ;  she  drew  back  in  terror,  when,  what  was 
her  astonishment  in  hearing  a  name  uttered  that  spellbound  her 
— the  last  name  she  could  have  expected  to  hear;  for  Lilburne, 
the  instant  he  saw  Beaufort,  pale,  haggard,  agitated,  rush  into 
the  room,  and  bang  the  door  after  him,  could  only  suppose  that 
something  of  extraordinary  moment  had  occurred  with  regard  to 
the  dreaded  guest,  and  cried:  "You  come  about  Vaudemont ! 
Something  has  happened  about  Vaudemont !  About  Philip ! 
What  is  it  ?  Calm  yourself." 

Fanny,  as  the  name  was  thus  abruptly  uttered,  actually  thrust 
her  face  through  the  door ;  but  she  again  drew  back,  and,  all  her 
senses  preternaturally  quickened  at  that  name,  while  she  held  the 
door  almost  closed,  listened  with  her  whole  soul  in  her  ears. 

The  face  of  both  the  men  were  turned  from  her,  and  her  partial 
entry  had  not  been  perceived. 

"Yes,"  said  Robert  Beaufort,  leaning  his  weight,  as  if  ready  to 
sink  to  the  ground,  upon  Lilburne's  shoulder :  "Yes;  Vaude- 
mont, or  Philip,  for  they  are  one, — yes,  it  is  about  that  man  I 
have  come  to  consult  you.  Arthur  has  arrived." 

"Well?" 

"And  Arthur  has  seen  the  wretch  who  visited  us,  and  the 
rascal's  manner  has  so  imposed  on  him,  so  convinced  him  that 
Philip  is  the  heir  to  all  our  property,  that  he  has  come  over — ill, 
ill — I  fear"  (added  Beaufort,  in  a  hollow  voice,)  "dying,  to — 
to—" 

"  To  guard  against  their  machinations?" 

"  No,  no,  no;  to  say  that  if  such  be  the  case,  neither  honor  nor 
conscience  will  allow  us  to  resist  his  rights.  He  is  so  obstinate  in 
this  matter ;  his  nerves  so  ill  bear  reasoning  and  contradiction, 
that  I  know  not  what  to  do — " 

"  Take  breath — go  on." 

"  Well,  it  seems  that  this  man  found  out  Arthur  almost  as  soon 

•Fortune  raises  men  from  low  estate  to  the  very  summit  of  prosperity. 


398  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

as  my  son  arrived  at  Paris ;  that  he  has  persuaded  Arthur  that  he 
has  it  in  his  power  to  prove  the  marriage ;  that  he  pretended  to 
be  very  impatient  for  a  decision  ;  that  Arthur,  in  order  to  gain 
time  to  see  me,  affected  irresolution ;  took  him  to  Boulogne,  for 
the  rascal  does  not  dare  to  return  to  England ;  left  him  there ; 
and  now  comes  back,  my  own  son,  as  my  worst  enemy,  to  con- 
spire against  me  for  my  property  !  I  could  not  have  kept  my 
temper  if  I  had  stayed.  But  that's  not  all :  that's  not  the 
worst :  Vaudemont  left  me  suddenly  in  the  morning  on  the 
receipt  of  a  letter.  In  taking  leave  of  Camilla  he  let  fall  hints 
which  fill  me  with  fear.  Well,  I  inquired  his  movements  as  I 

came  along;  he   had  stopped  at  D ,  had  been  closeted  for 

above  an  hour  with  a  man  whose  name  the  landlord  of  the  inn 
knew,  for  it  was  on  his  carpet-bag — the  name  was  Barlow.  You 
remember  the  advertisements !  Good  Heavens !  what  is  to  be 
done  ?  I  would  not  do  anything  unhandsome  or  dishonest.  But 
there  never  was  a  marriage.  I  never  will  believe  there  was  a 
marriage — never  !  " 

"There  was  a  marriage,  Robert  Beaufort,"  said  Lord  Lilburne, 
almost  enjoying  the  torture  he  was  about  to  inflict;  "  and  I  hold 
here  a  paper  that  Philip  Vaudemont — for  so  we  will  yet  call  him 
— would  give  his  right  hand  to  clutch  for  a  moment.  I  have  but 
just  found  it  in  a  secret  cavity  in  that  bureau.  Robert,  on  this 
paper  may  depend  the  fate,  the  fortune,  the  prosperity,  the  great- 
ness of  Philip  Vaudemont ;  or  his  poverty,  his  exile,  his  ruin. 
See  !  " 

Robert  Beaufort  glanced  over  the  paper  held  out  to  him,  drop- 
ped it  on  the  floor,  and  staggered  to  a  seat.  Lilburne  coolly 
replaced  the  document  in  the  bureau,  and,  limping  to  his  brother- 
in-law,  said  with  a  smile  : 

"  But  the  paper  is  in  my  possession;  I  will  not  destroy  it.  No  ; 
I  have  no  right  to  destroy  it.  Besides,  it  would  be  a  crime  ;  but 
if  I  give  it  to  you,  you  can  do  with  it  as  you  please." 

"  O  Lilburne,  spare  me — spare  me.  I  meant  to  be  an  honest 
man.  I — I — "  And  Robert  Beaufort  sobbed. 

Lilburne  looked  at  him  in  scornful  surprise. 

"  Do  not  fear  that  /  shall  ever  think  worse  of  you;  and  who 
else  will  know  it  ?  Do  not  fear  me.  No ;  I,  too,  have  reasons  to 
hate  and  fear  this  Philip  Vaudemont ;  for  Vaudemont  shall  be  his 
name,  and  not  Beaufort,  in  spite  of  fifty  such  scraps  of  paper  !  He 
has  known  a  man — my  worst  foe ;  he  has  secrets  of  mine — of  my 
past — perhaps  of  my  present :  but  I  laugh  at  his  knowledge  while 
he  is  a  wandering  adventurer  ;  I  should  tremble  at  that  knowledge 
if  he  could  thunder  it  out  to  the  world  as  Philip  Beaufort,  of, 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING,  399 

Beaufort  Court !  There,  I  am  candid  with  you.  Now  hear  my 
plan.  Prove  to  Arthur  that  his  visitor  is  a  convicted  felon,  by 
sending  the  officers  of  justice  after  him  instantly  ;  off  with  him 
again  to  the  Settlements.  Defy  a  single  witness ;  entrap  Vaude- 
mont  back  to  France,  and  prove  him  (1  think  I  will  prove  him 
such — I  think  so — with  a  little  money  and  a  little  pains) — prove 
him  the  accomplice  of  William  Gawtrey,  a  coiner  and  a  mur- 
derer !  Pshaw  !  take  yon  paper.  Do  with  it  as  you  will — keep  it 
— give  it  to  Arthur — let  Philip  Vaudemont  have  it,  and  Philip 
Vaudemont  will  be  rich  and  great,  the  happiest  man  between  earth 
and  paradise!  On  the  other  hand,  come  and  tell  me  that  you  have 
lost  it,  or  that  I  never  gave  you  such  a  paper,  or  that  no  such 
paper  ever  existed  ;  and  Philip  Vaudemont  may  live  a  pauper,  and 
die,  perhaps,  a  slave  at  the  galleys !  Lose  it,  I  say,  lose  it,  and 
advise  with  me  upon  the  rest." 

Horror-struck,  bewildered,  the  weak  man  gazed  upon  the  calm 
face  of  the  master-villain,  as  the  scholar  of  the  old  fables  might 
have  gazed  on  the  fiend  who  put  before  him  worldly  prosperity 
here  and  the  loss  of  his  soul  hereafter.  He  had  never  hitherto 
regarded  Lilburne  in  his  true  light.  He  was  appalled  by  the 
black  heart  that  lay  bare  before  him. 

"I  can't  destroy  it — I  can't,"  he  faltered  out;  "and  if  I  did, 
out  of  love  for  Arthur,  don't  talk  of  galleys, — of  vengeance — I — 
I—" 

"The  arrears  of  the  rents  you  have  enjoyed  will  send  you  to 
gaol  for  your  life.  No,  no;  don't  destroy  the  paper!  " 

Beaufort  rose  with  a  desperate  effort ;  he  moved  to  the  bureau. 
Fanny's  heart  was  on  her  lips ;  of  this  long  conference  she  had 
understood  only  the  one  broad  point  on  which  Lilburne  had  in- 
sisted with  an  emphasis  that  could  have  enlightened  an  infant;  and 
he  looked  on  Beaufort  as  an  infant  then :  On  that  paper  rested 
Philip  Vaudemonfs  fate — happiness  if  saved,  ruin  if  destroyed ; 
Philip — her  Philip  !  And  Philip  himself  had  said  to  her  once — 
when  had  she  ever  forgotten  his  words?  and  now  how  those  words 
flashed  across  her — Philip  himself  had  said  to  her  once,  "Upon 
a  scrap  of  paper,  if  I  could  but  find  it,  may  depend  my  whole 
fortune,  my  whole  happiness,  all  that  I  care  for  in  life."  Robert 
Beaufort  moved  to  the  bureau ;  he  seized  the  document ;  he  look- 
ed over  it  again,  hurriedly,  and  ere  Lilburne,  who  by  no  means 
wished  to  have  it  destroyed  in  his  own  presence,  was  aware  of  his 
intention,  he  hastened  with  tottering  steps  to  the  hearth,  averted 
his  eyes,  and  cast  it  on  the  fire.  At  that  instant,  something  white 
— he  scarce  knew  what,  it  seemed  to  him  as  a  spirit,  as  a  ghost — - 
darted  by  him,  and  snatched  the  paper,  as  yet  uninjured,  from 


40O  MIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

the  embers!  There  was  a  pause  for  the  hundredth  part  of  a 
moment;  a  gurgling  sound  of  astonishment  and  horror  from  Beau- 
fort ;  an  exclamation  from  Lilburne ;  a  laugh  from  Fanny,  as,  her 
eyes  flashing  light,  with  a  proud  dilation  of  stature,  with  thepaper 
clasped  tightly  to  her  bosom,  she  turned  her  looks  of  triumph  from 
one  to  the  other.  The  two  men  were  both  too  amazed,  at  the  in- 
stant, for  rapid  measures.  But  Lilburne,  recovering  himself  first, 
hastened  to  her ;  she  eluded  his  grasp :  she  made  towards  the 
door  to  the  passage;  when  Lilburne,  seriously  alarmed,  seized  her 
arm: 

"  Foolish  child !  give  me  that  paper !  " 

"Never  but  with  my  life!"  And  Fanny's  cry  for  help  rang 
through  the  house. 

"Then — "  The  speech  died  on  his  lips,  for  at  that  instant  a 
rapid  stride  was  heard  without — a  momentary  scuffle — voices  in 
altercation ;  the  door  gave  way  as  if  a  battering  ram  had  forced  it 
— not  so  much  thrown  forward,  as  actually  hurled  into  the  room, 
the  body  of  Dykeman  fell  heavily,  like  a  dead  man's,  at  the  very 
feet  of  Lord  Lilburne — and  Philip  Vaudemont  stood  in  the  door- 
way ! 

The  grasp  of  Lilburne  on  Fanny's  arm  relaxed,  and  the  girl 
with  one  bound,  sprung  to  Philip's  breast.  "  Here,  here  !  "  she 
cried;  "take  it!  take  it!"  and  she  thrust  the  paper  into  his 
hand.  "Don't  let  them  have  it — read  it — see  it — nevermind 
me  /"  But  Philip,  though  his  hand  unconsciously  closed  on  the 
precious  document,  did  mind  Fanny ;  and  in  that  moment  her 
cause  was  the  one  in  the  world  to  him. 

"  Foul  villain  !  "  he  said,  as  he  strode  to  Lilburne,  while  Fanny 
still  clung  to  his  breast :  ' '  Speak !  Speak ! — is — she — is  she  ? — 
man — man,  speak  !  You  know  what  I  would  say  !  She  is  the  child 
of  your  own  daughter — the  grandchild  of  that  Mary  whom  you 
dishonored — the  child  of  the  woman  whom  William  Gawtrey 
saved  from  pollution  !  Before  he  died,  Gawtrey  commended  her 
to  my  care  !  O  God  of  Heaven ! — speak  ! — I  am  not  too  late  !  " 

The  manner,  the  words,  the  face  of  Philip  left  Lilburne  terror- 
stricken  with  conviction.  But  the  man's  crafty  ability,  debased 
as  it  was,  triumphed  even  over  remorse  for  the  dread  guilt  medi- 
tated; over  gratitude  for  the  dread  guilt  spared.  He  glanced  at 
Beaufort,  at  Dykeman,  who  now,  slowly  recovering,  gazed  at  him 
with  eyes  that  seemed  starting  from  their  sockets;  and  lastly  fixed 
his  look  on  Philip  himself.  There  were  three  witnesses — presence 
of  mind  was  his  great  attribute  ! 

"  And  if,  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  I  knew,  or,  at  least,  had 
the  firmest  persuasion  that  Fanny  was  my  grandchild,  what  then! 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  4OT 

Why  else  should  she  be  here  !     Pooh,  sir  !     I  am  an  old  man." 

Philip  recoiled  a  step  in  wonder ;  his  plain  sense  was  baffled  by 
the  calm  lie.  He  looked  down  at  Fanny,  who,  comprehending 
nothing  of  what  was  spoken,  for  all  her  faculties,  even  her  very 
sense  of  sight  and  hearing,  were  absorbed  in  her  patient  anxiety 
for  him  cried  out : 

"No  harm  has  come  to  Fanny — none:  only  frightened.  Read! 
Read  !  Save  that  paper !  You  know  what  you  once  said  about 
a  mere  scrap  of  paper !  Come  away  !  Come  ! ' ' 

He  did  now  cast  his  eyes  on  the  paper  he  held.  That  was  an 
awful  moment  for  Robert  Beaufort — even  for  Lilburne !  To 
snatch  the  fatal  document  from  that  gripe !  They  would  as  soon 
have  snatched  it  from  a  tiger  !  He  lifted  his  eyes — they  rested  on 
his  mother's  picture  !  Her  lips  smiled  on  him  !  He  turned  to 
Beaufort  in  a  state  of  emotion  too  exulting,  too  blest  for  vulgar 
vengeance — for  vulgar  triumph — almost  for  words. 

"  Look  yonder,  Robert  Beaufort — look  !  "  and  he  pointed  to 
the  picture.  "Her  name  is  spotless?  I  stand  again  beneath  a 
roof  that  was  my  father's, — the  Heir  of  Beaufort!  We  shall 
meet  before  the  justice  of  our  country.  For  you,  Lord  Lilburne, 
I  will  believe  you  :  it  is  too  horrible  to  doubt  even  your  intentions. 
If  wrong  had  chanced  to  her,  I  would  have  rent  you  where  you 
stand,  limb  from  limb.  And  thank  her" — (for  Lilburne  recov- 
ered at  this  language  the  daring  of  his  youth,  before  calculation, 
indolence,  and  excess  had  dulled  the  edge  of  his  nerves ;  and, 
unawed  by  the  height,  and  manhood,  and  strength  of  his  menacer, 
stalked  haughtily  up  to  him) — "and  thank  your  relationship  to 
her,"  said  Philip,  sinking  his  voice  into  a  whisper,  "that  I  do 
not  brand  you  as  a  pilferer  and  a  cheat !  Hush,  knave  !  Hush, 
pupil  of  George  Gawtrey  !  There  are  no  duels  for  me  but  with 
men  of  honor  ! ' ' 

Lilburne  now  turned  white,  and  the  big  word  stuck  in  his  throat. 
In  another  instant,  Fanny  and  her  guardian  had  quitted  the  house. 

"  Dykeman,"  said  Lord  Lilburne,  after  a  long  silence,  "  I  shall 
ask  you  another  time  how  you  came  to  admit  that  impertinent 
person.  At  present,  go  and  order  breakfast  for  Mr.  Beaufort." 

As  soon  as  Dykeman,  more  astounded,  perhaps,  by  his  lord's 
coolness,  than  even  by  the  preceding  circumstances,  had  left  the 
study,  Lilburne  came  up  to  Beaufort,  who  seemed  absolutely  stricken 
as  if  by  palsy,  and  touching  him  impatiently  and  rudely,  said : 

"  'Sdeath,  man  !  rouse  yourself!     There  is  not  a  moment  to  be 

lost !     I  have  already  decided  on  what  you  are  to  do.     This  paper 

is  not  worth  a  rush,  unless  the  curate  who  examined  it  will  depose 

to  that  fact.     He  is  a  curate — a  Welch  curate ;  you  are  yet  Mr. 

36 


402  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

Beaufort,  a  rich  and  a  great  man.  The  curate,  properly  managed, 
may  depose  to  the  contrary;  and  then  we  will  indict  them  all  for 
forgery  and  conspiracy.  At  the  worst,  you  can,  no  doubt,  get 
the  parson  to  forget  all  about  it — to  stay  away.  His  address  was 

on  the  certificate — C .  Go  yourself  into  Wales  without  an 

instant's  delay.  Then,  having  arranged  with  Mr.  Jones,  hurry 
back,  cross  to  Boulogne,  and  buy  this  convict  and  his  witness — 
yes,  buy  them  !  That,  now,  is  the  only  thing.  Quick  ! — quick  ! 
. — quick  !  Zounds,  man  !  if  it  were  my  affair,  my  estate,  I  would 
not  care  a  pin  for  that  fragment  of  paper;  I  should  rather  rejoice 
at  it.  I  see  how  it  could  be  turned  against  them !  Go  !  " 

"No,  no;  I  am  not  equal  to  it!  Will  you  manage  it? — will 
you  ?  Half  my  estate  ! — all !  Take  it:  but  save — " 

"  Tut !  "  interrupted  Lord  Lilburne,  in  great  disdain.  "  I  am 
as  rich  as  I  want  to  be.  Money  does  not  bribe  me.  I  manage 
this !  77  Lord  Lilburne  !  If  Why,  if  found  out,  it  is  subor- 
nation of  witnesses.  It  is  exposure — it  is  dishonor — it  is  ruin. 
What  then?  You  should  take  the  risk,  for  you  must  meet  ruin  if 
you  do  not.  /cannot,  /have  nothing  to  gain  !  " 

"  I  dare  not !  I  dare  not !  "  murmured  Beaufort,  quite  spirit- 
broken.  "Subornation,  dishonor,  exposure  !  And  I,  so  respect- 
able— my  character !  And  my  son  against  me,  too ! — my  son,  in 
whom  I  lived  again  ?  No,  no ;  let  them  take  all !  Let  them  take 
;t !  Ha!  ha!  let  them  take  it !  Good -day  to  you." 

"  Where  are  you  going  ?  " 

"I  shall  consult  Mr.  Blackwell,  and  I'll  let  you  know." 

And  Beaufort  walked  tremulously  back  to  his  carriage. 

11  Go  to  his  lawyer  !  "  growled  Lilburne.  "  Yes,  if  his  lawyer 
can  help  him  to  defraud  men  lawfully,  he'll  defraud  them  fast 
enough.  That  will  be  the  respectable  way  of  doing  it !  Um  ! 
This  may  be  an  ugly  business  for  me — the  paper  found  here — if  the 
girl  can  depose  to  what  she  heard,  and  she  must  have  heard  some- 
thing. No,  I  think  the  laws  of  real  property  will  hardly  allow 
her  evidence,  and  if  they  do — Um  ! — My  granddaughter  ! — is  it 
possible  !  And  Gawtrey  rescued  her  mother,  my  child,  from  her 
own  mother's  vices  !  I  thought  my  liking  to  that  girl  different 
from  any  other  I  have  ever  felt :  it  was  pure — //  was  !  It  was 
pity — affection.  And  I  must  never  see  her  again — must  forget 
the  whole  thing  !  And  I  am  growing  old — and  I  am  childless — 
and  alone  !  "  He  paused,  almost  with  a  groan :  .and  then  the 
expression  of  his  face  changing  to  rage,  he  cried  out :  "  The  man 
threatened  me,  and  I  was  a  coward  !  What  to  do  ?  Nothing ! 
The  defensive  is  my  line.  I  shall  play  no  more.  I  attack  no  one. 
Who  will  accuse  Lord  Lilburne  ?  Still,  Robert  is  a  fool.  I  must 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  4OJ 

not  leave  him  to  himself.     Ho  !    there !     Dykeman  ! — the   car- 
riage !     I  shall  go  to  London." 

Fortunate,  no  doubt,  it  was  for  Philip,  that  Mr.  Beaufort,  was 
not  Lord  Lilburne.  For  all  history  teaches  us — public  and  private 
history — conquerors,  statesmen,  sharp  hypocrites,  and  brave 
designers — yes,  they  all  teach  us  how  mighty  one  man  of  great 
intellect  and  no  scruple  is  against  the  justice  of  millions  !  The 
One  Man  moves,  the  Mass  is  inert.  Justice  sits  on  a  throne. 
Roguery  never  rests, — Activity  is  the  lever  of  Archimedes. 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

"  Quam  multa  injusta  ac  prava  fiunt  moribus."  * — TlJLL. 

.    "Volat  ambiguis 
Mobilis  alis  Hora."  f — SENECA. 

MR.  ROBERT  BEAUFORT  sought  Mr.  Blackwell,  and  long,  ramb- 
ling, and  disjointed  was  his  narrative.  Mr.  Blackwell,  after  some 
consideration,  proposed  to  set  about  doing  the  very  things  that 
Lilburne  had  proposed  at  once  to  do.  But  the  lawyer  expressed 
himself  legally  and  covertly,  so  that  it  did  not  seem  to  the  sober 
sense  of  Mr.  Beaufort  at  all  the  same  plan.  He  was  not  the  least 
alarmed  at  what  Mr.  Blackwell  proposed,  though  so  shocked  at 
what  Lilburne  dictated.  Blackwell  would  go  the  next  day  into 
Wales;  he  would  find  out  Mr.  Jones;  he  would  sound  him! 
Nothing  was  more  common,  with  people  of  the  nicest  honor, 
than  just  to  get  a  witness  out  of  the  way  !  Done  in  election 
petitions,  for  instance,  every  day. 

"True,"  said  Mr.  Beaufort,  much  relieved. 

Then,  after  having  done  that,  Mr.  Blackwell  would  return  to 
town,  and  cross  over  to  Boulogne  to  see  this  very  impudent  per- 
son whom  Arthur  (young  men  were  so  apt  to  be  taken  in  ! )  had 
actually  believed.  He  had  no  doubt  he  could  settle  it  all. 
Robert  Beaufort  returned  to  Berkeley  Square  actually  in  spirits. 

There  he  found  Lilburne,  who,  on  reflection,  seeing,  that 
Blackwell  was  at  all  events  more  up  to  the  business  than  his 
brother,  assented  to  the  propriety  of  the  arrangement. 

Mr.  Blackwell  accordingly  did  set  off  the  next  day.  That  next 
day,  perhaps,  made  all  the  difference.  Within  two  hours  from 
his  gaining  the  document  so  important,  Philip,  without  any  sub- 
tler exertion  of  intellect  than  the  decision  of  a  plain,  bold  sense, 
had  already  forestalled  both  the  peer  and  the  lawyer.  He  had 

*  How  many  unjust  and  vicious  actions  are  perpetrated  under  the  name  of  morals. 
|  The  hour  flies  moving  with  doubtful  wings, 


404  NIGHT  AND  MORNING. 

sent  down  Mr.  Barlow's  head  clerk  to  his  master  in  Wales  with 
the  document,  and  a  short  account  of  the  manner  in  which  it  had 
been  discovered.  And  fortunate,  indeed,  was  it  that  the  copy 

had  been  found ;  for  all  the  inquiries  of  Mr.  Barlow  at  A 

had  failed,  and  probably  would  have  failed,  without  such  a  clue, 
in  fastening  upon  any  one  probable  person  to  have  officiated  as 
Caleb  Price's  amanuensis.  The  sixteen  hours'  start  Mr.  Barlow 
gained  over  Blackwell  enabled  the  former  to  see  Mr.  Jones ;  to 
show  him  his  own  handwriting ;  to  get  a  written  and  witnessed 
attestation  from  which  the  curate,  however  poor,  and  however 
tempted,  could  never  well  have  escaped  (even  had  he  been  dis- 
honest, which  he  was  not)  of  his  perfect  recollection  of  the  fact 
of  making  an  extract  from  the  registry  at  Caleb's  desire,  though 
he  owned  he  had  quite  forgotten  the  names  he  extracted  till  they 
were  again  placed  before  him.  Barlow  took  care  to  arouse  Mr. 
Jones's  interest  in  the  case ;  quitted  Wales ;  hastened  over  to 
Boulogne ;  saw  Captain  Smith,  and'  without  bribes,  without 
threats,  but  by  plainly  proving  to  that  worthy  person  that  he 
could  not  return  to  England  nor  see  his  brother  without  being 
immediately  arrested ;  that  his  brother's  evidence  was  already 
pledged  on  the  side  of  truth ;  and  that  by  the  acquisition  of  new 
testimony  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  the  suit  would  be  success* 
ful — he  diverted  the  captain  from  all  disposition  towards  perfidy, 
convinced  him  on  which  side  his  interest  lay,  and  saw  him  return 
to  Paris,  where  very  shortly  afterwards  he  disappeared  forever 
from  this  world,  being  forced  into  a  duel,  much  against  his  will 
(with  a  Frenchman  whom  he  had  attempted  to  defraud),  and 
shot  through  the  lungs — thus  verifying  a  favorite  maxim  of  Lord 
Lilburne's,  viz.,  that  it  does  not  do,  on  the  long  run,  for  little 
men  to  play  the  Great  Game ! 

On  the  same  day  that  Blackwell  returned,  frustrated  in  his 
half-and-half  attempts  to  corrupt  Mr.  Jones,  and  not  having  been 
able  even  to  discover  Mr.  Smith,  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  received 
notice  of  an  Action  for  Ejectment  to  be  brought  by  Philip  Beau- 
fort at  the  next  Assizes.  And,  to  add  to  his  afflictions,  Arthur, 
whom  he  had  hitherto  endeavored  to  amuse  by  a  sort  of  ambigu- 
ous shilly-shally  correspondence,  became  so  alarmingly  worse, 
that  his  mother  brought  him  up  to  town  for  advice.  Lord  Lil- 
burne  was,  of  course,  sent  for;  and  on  learning  all,  his  counsel 
was  prompt. 

"I  told  you  before  that  this  man  loves  your  daughter.  See  if 
you  can  effect  a  compromise.  The  lawsuit  will  be  ugly,  and  pro- 
bably ruinous.  He  has  a  right  to  claim  six  years'  arrears — that 
is  above  ^100,000.  Make  yourself  his  father-in-law,  and  me 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  405 

his  uncle-in-law ;  and,  since  we  can't  kill  the  wasp,  we  may  at 
least  soften  the  venom  of  his  sting." 

Beaufort,  still  perplexed,  irresolute,  sought  his  son ;  and,  for 
the  first  time,  spoke  to  him  frankly — that  is,  frankly  for  Robert 
Beaufort !  He  owned  that  the  copy  of  the  register  had  been 
found  by  Lilburne  in  a  secret  drawer.  He  made  the  best  of  the 
story  Lilburne  himself  furnished  him  with  (adhering,  of  course, 
to  the  assertion  uttered  or  insinuated  to  Philip)  in  regard  to 
Fanny's  abduction  and  interposition;  he  said  nothing  of  his 
attempt  to  destroy  the  paper.  Why  should  he  ?  By  admitting 
the  copy  in  court — if  so  advised — he  could  get  rid  of  Fanny's 
evidence  altogether;  even  without  such  concession,  her  evidence 
might  possibly  be  objected  to  or  eluded.  He  confessed  that  -he 
feared  the  witness  who  copied  the  register  and  the  witness  to  the 
marriage  were  alive.  And  then  he  talked  pathetically  of  his 
desire  to  do  what  was  right,  his  dread  of  slander  and  misinterpre- 
tation. He  said  nothing  of  Sidney,  and  his  belief  that  Sidney 
and  Charles  Spencer  were  the  same ;  because,  if  his  daughter 
were  to  be  the  instrument  for  effecting  a  compromise,  it  was  clear 
that  her  engagement  with  Spencer  must  be  cancelled  and  con- 
cealed. And  luckily  Arthur's  illness  and  Camilla's  timidity, 
joined  now  to  her  father's  injunctions  not  to  excite  Arthur  in  his 
present  state  with  any  additional  causes  of  anxiety,  prevented  the 
confidence  that  might  otherwise  have  ensued  between  the  brother 
and  sister.  And  Camilla,  indeed,  had  no  heart  for  such  a  con- 
ference. How,  when  she  looked  on  Arthur's  glassy  eye,  and 
listened  to  his  hectic  cough,  could  she  talk  to  him  of  love  and 
marriage?  As  to  the  automaton,  Mrs.  Beaufort,  Robert  made 
sure  of  her  discretion. 

Arthur  listened  attentively  to  his  father's  communication,  and 
the  result  of  that  interview  was  the  following  letter  from  Arthur 
to  his  cousin : 

"I  write  to  you  without  fear  of  misconstruction ;  for  I  write  to 
you  unknown  to  all  my  family,  and  I  am  the  only  one  of  them 
who  can  have  no  personal  interest  in  the  struggle  about  to  take 
place  between  my  father  and  yourself.  Before  the  law  can  decide 
between  you,  I  shall  be  in  my  grave.  I  write  this  from  the  Bed 
of  Death.  Philip,  I  write  this — /,  who  stood  beside  a  death-bed 
more  sacred  to  you  than  mine — I,  who  received  your  mother's 
last  sigh.  And  with  that  sigh  there  was  a  smile  that  lasted  when 
the  sigh  was  gone:  for  I  promised  to  befriend  her  children. 
Heaven  knows  how  anxiously  I  sought  to  fulfil  that  solemn  vow ! 
Feeble  and  sick  myself,  I  followed  you  and  your  brother  with  no 


406  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

aim,  no  prayer,  but  this, — to  embrace  you  and  say,  '  Accept  a 
new  brother  in  me.'  I  spare  you  the  humiliation — for  it  is  yours 
not  mine — of  recalling  what  passed  between  us  when  at  last  we 
met.  Yet,  I  still  sought  to  save,  at  least,  Sidney, — more  espe- 
cially confided  to  my  care  by  his  dying  mother.  He  mysteriously 
eluded  pur  search ;  but  we  had  reason,  by  a  letter  received  from 
some  unknown  hand,  to  believe  him  saved  and  provided  for. 
Again  I  met  you  at  Paris.  I  saw  you  were  poor.  Judging  from 
your  associate,  I  might  with  justice  think  you  depraved.  Mind- 
ful of  your  declaration  never  to  accept  bounty  from  a  Beaufort, 
and  remembering  with  natural  resentment  the  outrage  I  had 
before  received  from  you,  I  judged  it  vain  to  seek  and  remon- 
strate with  you,  but  I  did  not  judge  it  vain  to  aid.  I  sent  you, 
anonymously,  what  at  least  would  suffice,  if  absolute  poverty  had 
subjected  you  to  evil  courses,  to  rescue  you  from  them  if  your 
heart  were  so  disposed.  Perhaps  that  sum,  trifling  as  it  was,  may 
have  smoothed  your  path  and  assisted  your  career.  And  why 
tell  you  all  this  now?  To  dissuade  from  asserting  rights  you  con- 
ceive to  be  just?  Heaven  forbid!  If  justice  is  with  you,  so 
also  is  the  duty  due  to  your  mother's  name.  But  simply  for  this: 
that  in  asserting  such  rights,  you  content  yourself  with  justice, 
not  revenge ;  that  in  righting  yourself,  you  do  not  wrong  others. 
If  the  law  should  decide  for  you,  the  arrears  you  could  demand 
would  leave  my  father  and  sister  beggars.  This  may  be  law — it 
would  not  be  justice ;  for  my  father  solemnly  believed  himself, 
and  had  every  apparent  probability  in  his  favor,  the  true  heir  of 
the  wealth  that  devolved  upon  him.  This  is  not  all.  There  may 
be  circumstances  connected  with  the  discovery  of  a  certain  docu- 
ment that,  if  authentic,  and  I  do  not  presume  to  question  it,  may 
decide  the  contest  so  far  as  it  rests  on  truth  ;  circumstances  which 
might  seem  to  bear  hard  upon  my  father's  good  name  and  faith. 
I  do  not  know  sufficiently  of  law  to  say  how  far  these  could  be 
publicly  urged,  or,  if  urged,  exaggerated  and  tortured  by  an 
advocate's  calumnious  ingenuity.  But  again  I  say,  justice,  and 
not  revenge  !  And  with  this  I  conclude,  enclosing  to  you  these 
lines,  written  in  your  own  hand,  and  leaving  you  the  arbiter  of 
their  value. 

"ARTHUR  BEAUFORT." 

The  lines  enclosed  were  these,  a  second  time  placed  before  the 
reader : 

"  I  cannot  guess  who  you  are.     They  say  that  you  call  your- 
self a  relation;  that  must  be  some  mistake.     I  knew  not  that  my 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  407 

poor  mother  had  relations  so  kind.  But,  whoever  you  be,  you 
soothed  her  last  hours — she  died  in  your  arms;  and  if  ever — 
years,  long  years,  hence — we  should  chance  to  meet,  and  I  can 
do  anything  to  aid  another,  my  blood,  and  my  life,  and  my  heart, 
and  my  soul,  all  are  slaves  to  your  will !  If  you  be  really  of  her 

kindred,  I  commend  to  you  my  brother;  he  is  at with  Mr. 

Morton.  If  you  can  serve  him,  my  mother's  soul  will  watch 
over  you  as  a  guardian  angel.  As  for  me,  I  ask  no  help  from  any 
one ;  I  go  into  the  world,  and  will  carve  out  my  own  way.  So 
much  do  I  shrink  from  the  thought  of  charity  from  others,  that  I 
do  not  believe  I  could  bless  you  as  I  do  now,  if  your  kindness  to 
me  did  not  close  with  the  stone  upon  my  mother's  grave. 

"PHILIP." 

This  letter  was  sent  to  the  only  address  of  Monsieur  de  Vaude- 
mont  which  the  Beauforts  knew,  viz.,  his  apartments  in  town, 
and  he  did  not  receive  it  the  day  it  was  sent. 

Meanwhile  Arthur  Beaufort's  malady  continued  to  gain  ground 
rapidly.  His  father,  absorbed  in  his  own  more  selfish  fears 
(though  at  the  first  sight  of  Arthur,  overcome  by  the  alteration 
of  his  appearance),  had  ceased  to  consider  his  illness  fatal.  In 
fact,  his  affection  for  Arthur  was  rather  one  of  pride  than  love ; 
long  absence  had  weakened  the  ties  of  early  custom.  He  prized 
him  as  an  heir  rather  than  treasured  him  as  a  son.  It  almost 
seemed  that,  as  the  Heritage  was  in  danger,  so  the  Heir  became 
less  dear :  this  was  only  because  he  was  less  thought  of.  Poor 
Mrs.  Beaufort,  yet  but  partially  acquainted  with  the  terrors  of  her 
husband,  still  clung  to  hope  for  Arthur.  Her  affection  for  him 
brought  out  from  the  depths  of  her  cold  and  insignificant  char- 
acter qualities  that  had  never  before  been  apparent.  She  watched 
— she  nursed — she  tended  him.  The  fine  lady  was  gone ;  noth- 
ing but  the  mother  was  left  behind. 

With  a  delicate  constitution,  and  with  an  easy  temper,  which 
yielded  to  the  influence 'of  companions  inferior  to  himself,  except 
in  bodily  vigor  and  more  sturdy  will,  Arthur  Beaufort  had  been 
ruined  by  prosperity.  His  talents  and  acquirements,  if  not  first- 
rate,  at  least  far  above  mediocrity,  had  only  served  to  refine  his 
tastes,  not  to  strengthen  his  mind.  His  amiable  impulses,  his 
charming  disposition,  and  sweet  temper,  had  only  served  to  make 
him  the  dupe  of  the  parasites  that  feasted  on  the  lavish  heir. 
His  heart,  frittered  away  in  the  usual  round  of  light  intrigues  and 
hollow  pleasures,  had  become  too  sated  and  exhausted  for  the 
redeeming  blessings  of  a  deep  and  a  noble  love.  He  had  so 
lived  for  Pleasure  that  he  had  never  known  Happiness.  His  frame 


408  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

broken  by  excesses  in  which  his  better  nature  never  took  delight, 
he  came  home — to  hear  of  ruin  and  to  die  ! 

It  was  evening  in  the  sick  room.  Arthur  had  risen  from  the 
bed  to  which,  for  some  days,  he  had  voluntarily  taken,  and  was 
stretched  on  the  sofa  before  the  fire.  Camilla  was  leaning  over 
him,  keeping  in  the  shade,  that  he  might  not  see  the  tears  which 
she  could  not  suppress.  His  mother  had  been  endeavoring  to 
amuse  him,  as  she  would  have  amused  herself,  by  reading  aloud 
one  of  the  light  novels  of  the  hour  ;  novels  that  paint  the  life  of 
the  higher  classes  as  one  gorgeous  holyday. 

"  My  dear  mother,"  said  the  patient,  querulously,  "I  have  no 
interest  in  these  false  descriptions  of  the  life  I  have  led.  I  know 
that  life's  worth.  Ah  !  had  I  been  trained  to  some  employment, 
some  profession  !  had  I — well — it  is  weak  to  repine.  Mother, 
tell  me,  you  have  seen  Mons.  de  Vaudemont :  Is  he  strong  and 
healthy?" 

"Yes ;  too  much  so.     He  has  not  your  elegance,  dear  Arthur." 

"And  do  you  admire  him,  Camilla?  Has  no  other  caught 
your  heart  or  your  fancy  ?  " 

"My  dear  Arthur,"  interrupted  Mrs.  Beaufort,  "you  forget 
that  Camilla  is  scarcely  out ;  and  of  course  a  young  girl's  affec- 
tions, if  she's  well  brought  up,  are  regulated  by  the  experience 
of  her  parents.  It  is  time  to  take  the  medicine :  it  certainly 
agrees  with  you;  you  have  more  color  to-day,  my  dear,  dear 
son." 

While  Mrs.  Beaufort  was  pouring  out  the  medicine,  the  door 
gently  opened,  and  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  appeared ;  behind  him 
there  rose  a  taller  and  a  statelier  form,  but  one  which  seemed  more 
bent,  more  humbled,  more  agitated  Beau  fort  advanced.  Camilla 
looked  up  and  turned  pale.  The  visitor  escaped  from  Mr.  Beau- 
fort's grasp  on  his  arm  ;  he  came  forward,  trembling;  he  fell  on 
his  knees  beside  Arthur,  and  seizing  his  hand,  bent  over  it  in 
silence :  but  silence  so  stormy  !  silence  more  impressive  than  all 
words:  his  breast  heaved,  his  whole  frame  shook.  Arthur  guessed 
at  once  whom  he  saw,  and  bent  down  gently  as  if  to  raise  his 
visitor. 

"  Oh  !  Arthur  !  Arthur!  "  then  cried  Philip;  "  forgive  me  ! 
My  mother's  comforter — my  cousin — my  brother  !  Oh  !  brother, 
forgive  me  !  ' ' 

And  as  he  half  rose,  Arthur  stretched  out  his  arms,  and  Philip 
clasped  him  to  his  breast. 

It  is  in  vain  to  describe  the  different  feelings  that  agitated  those 
who  beheld  ;  the  selfish  congratulations  of  Robert,  mingled  with 
a  better  and  purer  feeling;  the  stupor  of  the  mother;  the  emo- 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  409 

tions  that  she  herself  could  not  unravel,  which  rooted  Camilla  to 
the  spot. 

"  You  own  me,  then, — you  own  me  !  "  cried  Philip.  "  You 
accept  the  brotherhood  that  my  mad  passions  once  rejected  !  And 
you,  too — you,  Camilla — you  who  once  knelt  by  my  side,  under 
this  very  roof — do  you  remember  me  now  /  Oh,  Arthur !  that 
letter — that  letter  !  Yes,  indeed,  that  aid  which  I  ascribed  to  any 
one,  rather  than  to  you,  made  the  date  of  a  fairer  fortune.  I  may 
have  owed  to  that  aid  the  very  fate  that  has  preserved  me  till 
now;  the  very  name  which  I  have  not  discredited.  No,  no;  do 
not  think  you  can  ask  me  a  favor ;  you  can  but  claim  your  due. 
Brother  !  my  dear  brother  !  " 

CHAPTER  XVII. 
"  Warwick. — Exceeding  well !  his  cares  are  now  all  over." — Henry  IV. 

THE  excitement  of  this  interview  soon  overpowering  Arthur, 
Philip,  in  quitting  the  room  with  Mr.  Beaufort,  asked  a  conference 
with  that  gentleman ;  and  they  went  into  the  very  parlor  from 
which  the  rich  man  had  once  threatened  to  expel  the  haggard 
suppliant.  Philip  glanced  around  the  room,  and  the  whole  scene 
came  again  before  him.  After  a  pause,  he  thus  began  : 

"  Mr.  Beaufort,  let  the  Past  be  forgotten.  We  may  have  need 
of  mutual  forgiveness,  and  I,  who  have  so  wronged  your  noble 
son,  am  willing  to  suppose  that  I  misjudged  you.  I  cannot,  it  is 
true,  forego  this  lawsuit." 

Mr.  Beaufort's  face  fell. 

"I  have  no  right  to  do  so.  I  am  the  trustee  of  my  father's 
honor  and  my  mother's  name :  I  must  vindicate  both  :  I  cannot 
forego  this  lawsuit.  But  when  I  once  bowed  myself  to  enter  your 
house — then  only  with  a  hope,  where  now  I  have  the  certainty, 
of  obtaining  my  heritage — it  was  with  the  resolve  to  bury  in 
oblivion  every  sentiment  that  would  transgress  the  most  temperate 
justice.  Now,  I  will  do  more.  If  the  law  decide  against  me, 
we  are  as  we  were ;  if  with  me, — listen :  I  will  leave  you  the 
lands  of  Beaufort,  for  your  life  and  your  son's.  I  ask  but  for  me 
and  for  mine  such  a  deduction  from  your  wealth  as  will  enable 
me,  should  my  brother  be  yet  living,  to  provide  for  him ;  and  (if 
you  approve  the  choice,  which  out  of  all  earth  I  would  desire  to 
make)  to  give  whatever  belongs  to  more  refined  or  graceful  exis- 
tence than  I  myself  care  for,  to  her  whom  I  would  call  my  wife. 
Robert  Beaufort,  in  this  room  I  once  asked  you  to  restore  to  me 
the  only  being  I  then  loved :  I  am  now  again  your  suppliant ;  and 


410  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

this  time  you  have  it  in  your  power  to  grant  my  prayer.  Let 
Arthur  be,  in  truth,  my  brother :  give  me,  if  I  prove  myself,  as  I 
feel  assured,  entitled  to  hold  the  name  my  father  bore,  give  me 
your  daughter  as  my  wife ;  give  me  Camilla,  and  I  will  not  envy 
you  the  lands  I  am  willing  for  myself  to  resign  ;  and  if  they  pass 
to  my  children,  those  children  will  be  your  daughter's  !  " 

The  first  impulse  of  Mr.  Beaufort  was  to  grasp  the  hand  held 
out  to  him ;  to  pour  forth  an  incoherent  torrent  of  praise  and 
protestation ;  of  assurances  that  he  could  not  hear  of  such  gene- 
rosity ;  that  what  was  right  was  right ;  that  he  should  be  proud 
of  such  a  son-in-law,  and  much  more  to  the  same  key.  And  in 
the  midst  of  this,  it  suddenly  occurred  to  Mr.  Beaufort,  that  if 
Philip's  case  were  really  as  good  as  he  said  it  was,  he  could  not 
talk  so  coolly  of  resigning  the  property  it  would  secure  him  for 
the  term  of  a  life  (Mr.  Beaufort  thought  of  his  own)  so  uncom- 
monly good,  to  say  nothing  of  Arthur's.  At  this  notion,  he 
thought  it  best  not  to  commit  himself  too  far  ;  drew  in  as  artfully 
as  he  could,  until  he  could  consult  Lord  Lilburne  and  his  lawyer; 
and  recollecting  also  that  he  had  a  great  deal  to  manage  with 
respect  to  Camilla  and  her  prior  attachment,  he  began  to  talk  of 
his  distress  for  Arthur,  of  the  necessity  of  waiting  a  little  before 
Camilla  was  spoken  to,  while  so  agitated  about  her  brother,  of  the 
exceedingly  strong  case  which  his  lawyer  advised  him  he  possessed 
— not  but  what  he  would  rather  rest  the  matter  on  justice  than 
law — and  that  if  the  law  should  be  with  him,  he  would  not  the 
less  (provided  he  did  not  force  his  daughter's  inclinations,  of 
which,  indeed,  he  had  no  fear)  be  most  happy  to  bestow  her  hand 
on  his  brother's  nephew,  with  such  a  portion  as  would  be  most 
handsome  to  all  parties. 

It  often  happens  to  us  in  this  world,  that  when  we  come  with 
our  heart  in  our  hands  to  some  person  or  other ;  when  we  pour 
out  some  generous  burst  of  feeling  so  enthusiastic  and  self-sacrific- 
ing, that  a  bystander  would  call  us  fool  and  Quixote — it  often,  I 
say,  happens  to  us,  to  find  our  warm  self  suddenly  thrown  back 
upon  our  cold  self;  to  discover  that  we  are  utterly  uncomprehen- 
ded,  and  that  the  swine  who  would  have  munched  up  the  acorn 
does  not  know  what  to  make  of  the  pearl.  That  sudden  ice 
which  then  freezes  over  us ;  that  supreme  disgust  and  dispair 
almost  of  the  whole  world,  which  for  the  moment  we  confound 
with  the  one  worldling — they  who  have  felt,  may  reasonably 
ascribe  to  Philip.  He  listened  to  Mr.  Beaufort  in  utter  and  con- 
temptuous silence,  and  then  replied  only  : 

' '  Sir,  at  all  events  this  is  a  question  for  law  to  decide.  If  it 
decide  as  you  think,  it  is  for  you  to  act ;  if  as  I  think,  it  is  for 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  41 1 

me.  Till  then  I  will  speak  to  you  no  more  of  your  daughter,  or 
my  intentions.  Meanwhile,  all  I  ask  is  the  liberty  to  visit  your 
son.  I  would  not  be  banished  from  his  sick  room !  " 

"My  dear  nephew!"  cried  Mr.  Beaufort,  again  alarmed, 
"consider  this  house  as  your  home." 

Philip  bowed  and  retreated  to  the  door,  followed  obsequiously 
by  his  uncle. 

It  chanced  that  both  Lord  Lilburne  and  Mr.  Blackwell  were  of 
the  same  mind  as  to  the  course  advisable  for  Mr.  Beaufort  now  to 
pursue.  Lord  Lilburne  was  not  only  anxious  to  exchange  a  hos- 
tile litigation  for  an  amicable  lawsuit,  but  he  was  really  eager  to 
put  the  seal  of  relationship  upon  any  secret  with  regard  to  him- 
self, that  a  man  who  might  inherit  $20,000  a  year — a  dead  shot, 
and  a  bold  tongue — might  think  fit  to  disclose.  This  made 
him  more  earnest  than  he  might  otherwise  have  been  in  advice 
as  to  other  people's  affairs.  He  spoke  to  Beaufort  as  a  man 
of  the  world — to  Blackwell  as  a  lawyer. 

"  Pin  the  man  down  to  his  generosity,"  said  Lilburne,  ""before 
he  gets  the  property.  Possession  makes  a  great  change  in  a 
man's  value  of  money.  After  all,  you  can't  enjoy  the  property 
when  you're  dead:  he  gives  it  next  to  Arthur,  who  is  not  mar- 
ried ;  and  if  anything  happen  to  Arthur,  poor  fellow,  why  in  de- 
volving on  your  daughter's  husband  and  children,  it  goes  in  the 
right  line.  Pin  him  down  at  once :  get  credit  with  the  world  for 
the  most  noble  and  disinterested  conduct,  by  letting  your  counsel 
state  that  the  instant  you  discovered  the  lost  document  you  wished 
to  throw  no  obstacle  in  the  way  of  proving  the  marriage,  and  that 
the  only  thing  to  consider  is,  if  the  marriage  be  proved ;  if  so, 
you  will  be  the  first  to  rejoice,  etc.,  etc.  You  know  all  that  sort 
of  humbug  as  well  as  any  man  !  " 

Mr.  Blackwell  suggested  the  same  advice,  though  in  different 
words,  after  taking  the  opinions  of  three  eminent  members  of  the 
bar ;  those  opinions,  indeed,  were  not  all  alike  :  one  was  adverse 
to  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort's  chance  of  success,  one  was  doubtful  of 
it,  the  third  maintained  that  he  had  nothing  to  fear  from  the 
action — except,  possibly,  the  ill-natured  construction  of  the  world. 
Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  disliked  the  idea  of  the  world's  ill-nature  almost 
as  much  as  he  did  that  of  losing  his  property.  And  when  eren 
this  last  and  more  encouraging  authority,  learning  privately  from 
Mr.  Blackwell  that  Arthur's  illness  was  of  a  nature  to  terminate 
fatally,  observed,  "that  a  compromise  with  a  claimant,  who  was 
at  all  events  Mr.  Beaufort's  nephew,  by  which  Mr.  Beaufort  could 
secure  the  enjoyment  of  the  estates  to  himself  for  life,  and  to  his 
son  for  life  also,  should  not  (whatever his  probabilities  of  legal 


412  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

success)  be  hastily  rejected,  unless  he  had  a  peculiar  affection  for 
a  very  distant  relation,  who,  failing  Mr.  Beaufort's  male  issue 
and  Philip's  claim,  would  be  heir-at-law,  but  whose  rights  would 
cease  if  Arthur  liked  to  cut  off  the  entail."  Mr.  Beaufort  at  once 
decided.  He  had  a  personal  dislike  to  that  distant  heir-at-law ; 
he  had  a  strong  desire  to  retain  the  esteem  of  the  world  ;  he  had 
an  intimate  conviction  of  the  justice  of  Philip's  claim  ;  he  had  a 
remorseful  recollection  of  his  brother's  generous  kindness,  to  him- 
self; he  preferred  to  have  for  his  heir,  in  case  of  Arthur's  decease, 
a  nephew  who  would  marry  his  daughter,  than  a  remote  kinsman. 

And  should,  after  all,  the  lawsuit  fail  to  prove  Philip's  right,  he 
was  not  sorry  to  have  the  estate  in  his  own  power  by  Arthur's  act 
in  cutting  off  the  entail.  Brief;  all  these  reasons  decided  him. 
He  saw  Philip ;  he  spoke  to  Arthur ;  and  all  the  preliminaries,  as 
suggested  above,  were  arranged  between  the  parties.  The  entail 
was  cut  off,  and  Arthur  secretly  prevailed  upon  his  father,  to 
whom,  for  the  present,  the  fee-simple  thus  belonged,  to  make  a 
will,  by  which  he  bequeathed  the  estates  to  Philip,  without  refer- 
ence to  the  question  of  his  legitimacy.  Mr.  Beaufort  felt  his  con- 
science greatly  eased  after  this  action — which,  too,  he  could 
always  retract  if  he  pleased  ;  and  henceforth  the  lawsuit  became 
a  matter  of  form,  so  far  as  the  property  it  involved  was  con- 
cerned. 

While  these  negotiations  went  on,  Arthur  continued  gradually 
to  decline.  Philip  was  with  him  always.  The  sufferer  took  a 
strange  liking  to  this  long-dreaded  relation,  this  man  of  iron  frame 
and  thews.  In  Philip  there  was  so  much  of  life,  that  Arthur 
almost  felt  as  if  in  his  presence  itself  there  was  an  antagonism  to 
death.  And  Camilla  saw  thus  her  cousin,  day  by  day,  hour  by 
hour,  in  that  sick  chamber,  lending  himself,  with  the  gentle  ten- 
derness of  a  woman,  to  soften  the  pang,  to  arouse  the  weariness, 
to  cheer  the  dejection.  Philip  never  spoke  to  her  of  love  :  in  such 
a  scene  that  had  been  impossible.  She  overcame  in  their  mutual 
cares  the  embarrassment  she  had  before  felt  in  his  presence ; 
whatever  her  other  feelings,  she  could  not,  at  least,  but  be  grateful  to 
one  so  tender  to  her  brother.  Three  letters  of  Charles  Spencer's  had 
been,  in  the  afflictions  of  the  house,  only  answered  by  a  brief  line. 
She  now  took  the  occasion  of  a  momentary  and  delusive  ameliora- 
tion in  Arthur's  disease  to  write  to  him  more  at  length.  She  was 
carrying,  as  usual,  the  letter  to  her  mother,  when  Mr.  Beaufort 
met  her,  and  took  the  letter  from  her  hand.  He  looked  embar- 
rassed for  a  moment,  and  bade  her  follow  him  into  his  study.  It 
was  then  that  Camilla  learned,  for  the  first  time,  distinctly,  the 
claims  and  rights  of  her  cousin ;  then  she  learned  also  at  what 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  413 

price  those  rights  were  to  be  enforced  with  the  least  possible  in- 
jury to  her  father.  Mr.  Beaufort  naturally  put  the  case  before  her 
in  the  strongest  point  of  the  dilemma.  He  was  to  be  ruined — 
utterly  ruined  ;  a  pauper,  a  beggar,  if  Camilla  did  not  save  him. 
The  master  of  his  fate  demanded  his  daughter's  hand.  Habit- 
ually subservient  to  even  a  whim  of  her  parents,  this  intelligence, 
the  entreaty,  the  command  with  which  it  was  accompanied,  over- 
whelmed her.  She  answered  but  by  tears ;  and  Mr.  Beaufort, 
assured  of  her  submission,  left  her,  to  consider  of  the  tone  of  the 
letter  he  himself  should  write  to  Mr.  Spencer.  He  had  sat  down 
to  this  very  task  when  he  was  summoned  to  Arthur's  room.  His 
son  was  suddenly  taken  worse :  spasms  that  threatened  immediate 
danger,  convulsed  and  exhausted  him ;  and  when  these  were 
allayed,  he  continued  for  three  days  so  feeble  that  Mr.  Beaufort, 
his  eyes  now  thoroughly  open  to  the  loss  that  awaited  him,  had  no 
thoughts  even  for  worldly  interests. 

On  the  night  of  the  third  day  Philip,  Robert  Beaufort,  his  wife, 
his  daughter,  were  grouped  round  the  death-bed  of  Arthur.  The 
sufferer  had  just  wakened  from  sleep,  and  he  motioned  to  Philip 
to  raise  him.  Mr.  Beaufort  started,  as  by  the  dim  light  he  saw 
his  son  in  the  arms  of  Catherine's  !  and  another  Chamber  of 
Death  seemed,  shadow-like,  to  replace  the  one  before  him. 
Words,  long  since  uttered,  knelled  in  his  ear :  "  There  shall  be 
a  death-bed  yet  beside  which  you  shall  see  the  spectre  of  her, 
now  so  calm,  rising  for  retribution  from  the  grave !  "  His  blood 
froze,  his  hair  stood  erect ;  he  cast  a  hurried,  shrinking  glance 
round  the  twilight  of  the  darkened  room  :  and,  with  a  feeble  cry, 
covered  his  white  face  with  his  trembling  hands  !  But  on  Arthur's 
lips  there  was  a  serene  smile ;  he  turned  his  eyes  from  Philip  to 
Camilla,  and  murmured,  "She  will  repay  you  !  "  A  pause,  and 
the  mother's  shriek  rang  through  the  room !  Robert  Beaufort 
raised  his  face  from  his  hands.  His  son  was  dead  ! 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

«  Jul. — And  what  reward  do  you  propose  ? 

It  must  be  my  love." — The  Double  Marriage. 

WHILE  these  events,  dark,  hurried,  and  stormy,  had  befallen 
the  family  of  his  betrothed,  Sidney  had  continued  his  calm  life 
by  the  banks  of  the  lovely  lake.  After  a  few  weeks  his  confi- 
dence in  Camilla's  fidelity  overbore  all  his  apprehensions  and 
forebodings.  Her  letters,  though  constrained  by  the  inspection 
to  which  they  were  submitted,  gave  him  inexpressible  consolation 


414  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

and  delight.  He  began,  however,  early  to  fancy  that  there  was 
a  change  in  their  tone.  The  letters  seemed  to  shun  the  one  sub- 
ject to  which  all  others  were  as  nought ;  they  turned  rather  upon 
the  guests  assembled  at  Beaufort  Court ;  and  why  I  know  not, — 
for  there  was  nothing  in  them  to  authorize  jealousy — the  brief 
words  devoted  to  Monsieur  de  Vaudemont  filled  him  with  uneasy 
and  terrible  suspicion.  He  gave  vent  to  these  feelings  as  fully  as 
he  dared  do  under  the  knowledge  that  his  letter  would  be  seen  ; 
and  Camilla  never  again  even  mentioned  the  name  of  Vaude- 
mont. Then  there  was  a  long  pause ;  then  her  brother's  arrival 
and  illness  were  announced;  then,  at  intervals,  but  a  few  hurried 
lines ;  then  a  complete,  long,  dreadful  silence ;  and  lastly,  with 
a  deep  black  border  and  a  solemn  black  seal,  came  the  following 
letter  from  Mr.  Beaufort : 

"  MY  DEAR  SIR  :  I  have  the  unutterable  grief  to  announce  to 
you  and  your  worthy  uncle  the  irreparable  loss  I  have  sustained  in 
the  death  of  my  only  son.  It  is  a  month  to-day  since  he  de- 
parted this  life.  He  died,  sir,  as  a  Christian  should  <\\e — humbly, 
penitently,  exaggerating  the  few  faults  of  his  short  life,  but — 
(and  here  the  writer's  hypocrisy,  though  so  natural  to  him — was 
it,  that  he  knew  not  that  he  was  hypocritical  ? — fairly  gave  way 
before  the  real  and  human  anguish,  for  which  there  is  no  diction- 
ary !) — but  I  cannot  pursue  this  theme  ! 

"  Slowly  now  awakening  to  the  duties  yet  left  me  to  discharge, 
I  cannot  but  be  sensible  of  the  material  difference  in  the  pros- 
pects of  my  remaining  child.  Miss  Beaufort  is  now  the  heiress 
to  an  ancient  name  and  a  large  fortune.  She  subscribes  with  me 
to  the  necessity  of  consulting  those  new  considerations  which  so 
melancholy  an  event  forces  upon  her  mind.  The  little  fancy — or 
liking — (the  acquaintance  was  too  short  for  more)  that  might 
naturally  spring  up  between  two  amiable  young  persons  thrown 
together  in  the  country,  must  be  banished  from  our  thoughts. 
As  a  friend  I  shall  be  always  happy  to  hear  of  your  welfare ;  and 
should  you  ever  think  of  a  profession  in  which  I  can  serve  you, 
you  may  command  my  utmost  interest  and  exertions.  I  know, 
my  young  friend,  what  you  will  feel  at  first,  and  how  disposed 
you  will  be  to  call  me  mercenary  and  selfish.  Heaven  knows  if 
that  be  really  my  character !  But  at  your  age,  impressions  are 
easily  effaced  ;  and  any  experienced  friend  of  the  world  will  as- 
sure you,  that,  in  the  altered  circumstances  of  the  case,  I  have 
no  option.  All  intercourse  and  correspondence,  of  course,  cease 
with  this  letter, — until,  at  least,  we  may  all  meet,  with  no  senti- 
ments but  those  of  friendship  and  esteem.  I  desire  my  compli- 


NIGHT  AND   MORNING.  415 

ments  to  your  worthy  uncle,  in  which  Mrs.  and  Miss  Beaufort 
join ;  and  I  am  sure  you  will  be  happy  to  hear  that  my  wife  and 
daughter,  though  still  in  great  affliction,  have  suffered  less  in 
health  than  I  could  have  ventured  to  anticipate. 

"  Believe  me,  dear  sir, 
'  Yours  sincerely, 

' '  ROBERT  BEAUFORT. 
"To  C.  SPENCER,  Esq., fun." 

When  Sidney  received  this  letter,  he  was  with  Mr.  Spencer,  and 
the  latter  read  it  over  the  young  man's  shoulder,  on  which  he 
leant  affectionately.  When  they  came  to  the  concluding  words, 
Sidney  turned  round  with  a  vacant  look  and  a  hollow  smile. 
"  You  see,  sir,"  he  said,  "you  see — " 

"My  boy — my  son — you  bear  this  as  you  ought.  Contempt 
will  soon  efface — " 

Sidney  started  to  his  feet,  and  his  whole  countenance  was 
changed. 

"  Contempt ! — yes,  for  him  !  But  for  her — she  knows  it  not ; 
she  is  no  party  to  this — I  cannot  believe  it — I  will  not !  I — I — " 
and  he  rushed  out  of  the  room.  He  was  absent  till  nightfall,  and 
when  he  returned,  he  endeavored  to  appear  calm,  but  it  was  in 
vain. 

The  next  day  brought  him  a  letter  from  Camilla,  written 
unknown  to  her  parents;  short,  it  is  true  (confirming  the  sentence 
of  separation  contained  in  her  father's),  and  imploring  him  not  to 
reply  to  it,  but  still  so  full  of  gentle  and  of  sorrowful  feeling,  so 
evidently  worded  in  the  wish  to  soften  the  anguish  she  inflicted, 
that  it  did  more  than  soothe — it  even  administered  hope. 

Now,  when  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  had  recovered  the  ordinary 
tone  of  his  mind  sufficiently  to  indite  the  letter  Sidney  had  just 
read,  he  had  become  fully  sensible  of  the  necessity  of  concluding 
the  marriage  between  Philip  and  Camilla  before  the  publicity  of 
the  lawsuit.  The  action  for  the  ejectment  could  not  take  place 
before  the  ensuing  March  or  April.  He  would  waive  the  ordinary 
etiquette  of  time  and  mourning  to  arrange  all  before.  Indeed 
he  lived  in  hourly  fear  lest  Philip  should  discover  that  he  had  a 
rival  in  his  brother,  and  break  off  the  marriage,  with  its  contin- 
gent advantages.  The  first  announcement  of  such  a  suit  in  the 
newspapers  might  reach  the  Spencers ;  and  if  the  young  man 
were,  as  he  doubted  not,  Sidney  Beaufort,  would  necessarily  bring 
him  forward,  and  ensure  the  dreaded  explanation.  Thus  apprehen- 
sive and  ever  scheming,  Robert  Beaufort  spoke  to  Philip  so  much, 
and  with  such  apparent  feeling;  of  his  wish  to  gratify,  at  the  earliest 


41 6  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

possible  period,  the  last  wish  of  his  son,  in  the  union  now 
arranged  ;  he  spoke,  with  such  seeming  consideration  and  good 
sense,  of  the  avoidance  of  all  scandal  and  misinterpretation  in  the 
suit  itself — which  suit  a  previous  marriage  between  the  claimant 
and  his  daughter  would  show  at  once  to  be  of  so  amicable  a  nature 
— that  Philip,  ardently  in  love  as  he  was,  could  not  but  assent  to 
any  hastening  of  his  expected  happiness  compatible  with  decorum. 
As  to  any  previous  publicity  by  way  of  newspaper  comment,  he 
agreed  with  Mr.  Beaufort  in  deprecating  it.  But  then  came  the 
question.  What  name  was  he  to  bear  in  the  interval  ? 

"As  to  that,"  said  Philip,  somewhat  proudly,  "when,  after 
my  mother's  suit  in  her  own  behalf,  I  persuaded  her  not  to  bear 
the  name  of  Beaufort,  though  her  due — and  for  my  own  part,  I 
prized  her  own  modest  name,  which  under  such  dark  appearances 
was  in  reality  spotless,  as  much  as  the  loftier  one  which  you  bear 
and  my  father  bore — so,  I  shall  not  resume  the  name  the  law 
denies  me  till  the  law  restores  it  to  me.  Law  alone  can  efface  the 
wrong  which  law  has  done  me." 

Mr.  Beaufort  was  pleased  with  this  reasoning  (erroneous  though 
it  was),  and  he  now  hoped  that  all  would  be  safely  arranged. 

That  a  girl  so  situated  as  Camilla,  and  of  a  character  not  ener- 
getic or  profound,  but  submissive,  dutiful,  and  timid,  should 
yield  to  the  arguments  of  her  father,  the  desire  of  her  dying 
brother ;  that  she  should  not  dare  to  refuse  to  become  the  instru- 
ment of  peace  to  a  divided  family,  the  saving  sacrifice  to  her 
father's  endangered  fortunes  ;  that,  in  fine,  when,  nearly  a  month 
after  Arthur's  death,  her  father,  leading  her  into  the  room  where 
Philip  waited  her  footsteps  with  a  beating  heart,  placed  her  hand 
in  his,  and  Philip,  falling  on  his  knees,  said  :  "  May  I  hope  to 
retain  this  hand  for  life?  "  she  should  falter  out  such  words  as  he 
might  construe  into  not  reluctant  acquiescence;  that  all  this 
should  happen  is  so  natural  that  the  reader  is  already  prepared  for 
it.  But  still  she  thought  with  bitter  and  remorseful  feelings  of 
him  thus  deliberately  and  faithlessly  renounced.  She  felt  how 
deeply  he  had  loved  her ;  she  knew  how  fearful  would  be  his 
grief.  She  looked  sad  and  thoughtful ;  but  her  brother's  death 
was  sufficient  in  Philip's  eyes  to  account  for  that.  The  praises 
and  gratitude  of  her  father,  to  whom  she  suddenly  seemed  to 
become  an  object  of  even  greater  pride  and  affection  than  ever 
Arthur  had  been ;  the  comfort  of  a  generous  heart,  that  takes 
pleasure  in  the  very  sacrifice  it  makes;  the  acquittal  of  her  con- 
science as  to  the  motives  of  her  conduct — began,  however,  to  pro- 
duce their  effect.  Nor,  as  she  had  lately  seen  more  of  Philip, 
could  she  be  insensible  of  his  attachment;  of  his  many  noble 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  41) 

qualities  ;  of  the  pride  which  most  women  might  have  felt  in  his 
addresses,  when  his  rank  was  once  made  clear ;  and  as  she  had 
ever  been  of  a  character  more  regulated  by  duty  than  passion,  so 
one  who  could  have  seen  what  was  passing  in  her  mind  would 
have  had  little  fear  for  Philip's  future  happiness  in  her  keeping — 
little  fear  but  that,  when  once  married  to  him,  her  affections 
would  have  gone  along  with  her  duties  ;  and  that  if  the  first  love 
were  yet  recalled,  it  would  be  with  a  sigh  due  rather  to  some 
romantic  recollection  than  some  continued  regret.  Few  of  either 
sex  are  ever  united  to  their  first  love;  yet  married  people  jog  on, 
and  call  each  other  "  my  dear  "  and  "  my  darling  "  all  the  same  ! 
It  might  be,  it  is  true,  that  Philip  would  be  scarcely  loved  with 
the  intenseness  with  which  he  loved;  but  if  Camilla's  feelings 
were  capable  of  corresponding  to  the  ardent  and  impassioned  ones 
of  that  strong  and  vehement  nature,  such  feelings  were  not  yet 
developed  in  her ;  the  heart  of  the  woman  might  still  be  half  con- 
cealed in  the  veil  of  the  virgin  innocence.  Philip  himself  was 
satisfied ;  he  believed  that  he  was  beloved ;  for  it  is  the  property 
of  love,  in  a  large  and  noble  heart,  to  reflect  itself,  and  to  see  its 
own  image  in  the  eyes  on  which  it  looks.  As  the  Poet  gives  ideal 
beauty  and  excellence  to  some  ordinary  child  of  Eve,  worshipping 
less  the  being  that  is  than  the  being  he  imagines  and  conceives, 
so  Love,  which  makes  us  all  poets  for  awhile,  throws  its  own 
divine  light  over  a  heart  perhaps  really  cold,  and  becomes  dazzled 
into  the  joy  of  a  false  belief  by  the  very  lustre  with  which  it  sur- 
rounds its  object. 

The  more,  however,  Camilla  saw  of  Philip,  the  more  (gradually 
overcoming  her  former  mysterious  and  superstitious  awe  of  him) 
she  grew  familiarized  to  his  peculiar  cast  of  character  and  thought; 
so  the  more  she  began  to  distrust  her  father's  assertion,  that  he 
had  insisted  on  her  hand  as  a  price — a  bargain — an  equivalent  for 
the  sacrifice  of  a  dire  revenge.  And  with  this  thought  came 
another.  Was  she  worthy  of  this  man  ?  Was  she  not  deceiving 
him?  Ought  she  not  to  say,  at  least,  that  she  had  known  a  pre- 
vious attachment,  however  determined  she  might  be  to  subdue  it  ? 
Often  the  desire  for  this  just  and  honorable  confession  trembled 
on  her  lips,  and  as  often  was  it  checked  by  some  chance  circum- 
stance or  some  maiden  fear.  Despite  their  connection,  there  was 
not  yet  between  them  that  delicious  intimacy  which  ought  to 
accompany  the  affiance  of  two  hearts  and  souls.  The  gloom  of 
the  house;  the  restraint  on  the  very  language  of  love  imposed  by 
a  death  so  recent,  and  so  deplored,  accounted  in  much  for  this 
reserve.  And  for  the  rest,  Robert  Beaufort  prudently  left  them 
very  few  and  very  brief  opportunities  to  be  alone. 
27 


41 8  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

In  the  meantime,  Philip  (now  persuaded  that  the  Beauforts 
were  ignorant  of  his  brother's  fate)  had  set  Mr.  Barlow's  activity 
in  search  of  Sidney ;  and  his  painful  anxiety  to  discover  one  so 
dear  and  so  mysteriously  lost,  was  the  only  cause  of  uneasiness 
apparent  in  the  brightening  Future.  While  these  researches, 
hitherto  fruitless,  were  being  made,  it  so  happened,  as  London 
began  now  to  refill,  and  gossip  began  now  to  revive,  that  a  report 
got  abroad,  no  one  knew  how  (probably,  from  the  servants),  that 
Monsieur  de  Vaudemont,  a  distinguished  French  officer,  was 
shortly  to  lead  the  daughter  and  sole  heiress  of  Robert  Beaufort, 
Esq.,  M.P.  to  the  hymeneal  altar  ;  and  that  report  very  quickly 
found  its  way  into  the  London  papers  :  from  the  London  papers 
it  spread  to  the  Provincial — it  reached  the  eyes  of  Sidney  in  his 
now  gloomy  and  despairing  solitude.  The  day  that  he  read  it, 
he  disappeared. 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

"  Jul.     ....     Good  lady,  love  him ! 

You  have  a  noble  and  an  honest  gentleman. 

I  ever  found  him  so. 

Love  him  no  less  that  I  have  done,  and  serve  him, 

And  Heaven  shall  bless  you — you  shall  bless  my  ashes." 

BEAUMONT  AND  FLETCHER  :  The  Double  Marriage. 

WE  have  been  too  long  absent  from  Fanny;  it  is  time  to  return 
to  her.  The  delight  she  experienced  when  Philip  made  her 
understand  all  the  benefits,  the  blessings,  that  her  courage,  nay, 
her  intellect,  had  bestowed  upon  him,  the  blushing  ecstasy  with 
which  she  heard  (as  they  returned  to  H ,  the  eventful  morn- 
ing of  her  deliverance,  side  by  side,  her  hand  clasped  in  his,  and 
often  pressed  to  his  grateful  lips)  his  praises,  his  thanks,  his  fear 
for  her  safety,  his  joy  at  regaining  her — all  this  amounted  to  a 
bliss,  which,  till  then,  she  could  not  have  conceived  that  life  was 

capable  of  bestowing.     And  when  he  left  her  at  H ,  to  hurry 

to  his  lawyer's  with  the  recovered  document,  it  was  but  for  an 
hour.  He  returned  and  did  not  quit  her  for  several  days.  And 
in  that  time  he  became  sensible  of  her  astonishing,  and,  to  him, 
it  seemed  miraculous,  improvement  in  all  that  renders  Mind  the 
equal  to  Mind ;  miraculous,  for  he  guessed  not  the  Influence  that 
makes  miracles  its  commonplace.  And  now  he  listened  atten- 
tively to  her  when  she  conversed ;  he  read  with  her  (though  read- 
ing was  never  much  in  his  vocation)  ;  his  unfastidious  ear  was 
charmed  with  her  voice,  when  it  sang  those  simple  songs ;  and 
his  manner  (impressed  alike  by  gratitude  for  the  signal  service 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  419 

rendered  to  him,  and  by  the  discovery  that  Fanny  was  no  longer 
a  child,  whether  in  mind  or  years),  though  not  less  gentle  than 
before,  was  less  familiar,  less  superior,  more  respectful,  and  more 
earnest.  It  was  a  change  which  raised  her  in  her  own  self-esteem. 
Ah,  those  were  rosy  days  for  Fanny  ! 

A  less  sagacious  judge  of  character  than  Lilburne  would  have 
formed  doubts  perhaps  of  the  nature  of  Philip's  interest  in  Fanny. 
But  he  comprehended  at  once  the  fraternal  interest  which  a  man 
like  Philip  might  well  take  in  a  creature  like  Fanny,  if  com- 
mended to  his  care  by  a  protector  whose  doom  was  so  awful  as 
that  which  had  engulfed  the  life  of  William  Gawtrey.  Lilburne 
had  some  thoughts  at  first  of  claiming  her,  but  as  he  had  no 
power  to  compel  her  residence  with  him,  he  did  not  wish,  on 
consideration,  to  come  again  in  contact  with  Philip  upon  ground 
so  full  of  humbling  recollections  as  that  still  overshadowed  by  the 
images  of  Gawtrey  and  Mary.  He  contented  himself  with  writ- 
ing an  artful  letter  to  Simon,  stating  that  from  Fanny's  residence 
with  Mr.  Gawtrey,  and  from  her  likeness  to  her  mother,  whom  he 
had  only  seen  as  a  child,  he  had  conjectured  the  relationship  she 
bore  to  himself;  and  having  obtained  other  evidence  of  that  fact 
(he  did  not  say  what  or  where),  he  had  not  scrupled  to  remove 
her  to  his  roof,  meaning  to  explain  all  to  Mr.  Simon  Gawtrey  the 
next  day.  This  letter  was  accompanied  by  one  from  a  lawyer, 
informing  Simon  Gawtrey  that  Lord  Lilburne  would  pay  £200 
a-year,  in  quarterly  payments,  to  his  order;  and  that  he  was 
requested  to  add,  that  when  the  young  lady  he  had  so  benevol- 
ently reared  came  of  age,  or  married,  an  adequate  provision 
would  be  made  for  her.  Simon's  mind  blazed  up  at  this  last  intel- 
ligence, when  read  to  him,  though  he  neither  comprehended  nor 
sought  to  know  why  Lord  Lilburne  should  be  so  generous,  or 
what  that  noble  person's  letter  to  himself  was  intended  to  con- 
vey. For  two  days,  he  seemed  restored  to  vigorous  sense ;  but 
when  he  had  once  clutched  the  first  payment  made  in  advance, 
the  touch  of  the  money  seemed  to  numb  him  back  to  his  lethargy ; 
the  excitement  of  desire  died  in  the  dull  sense  of  possession. 

And  just  at  that  time  Fanny's  happiness  came  to  a  close. 
Philip  received  Arthur  Beaufort's  letter ;  and  now  ensued  long 
and  frequent  absences ;  and  on  his  return,  for  about  an  hour  or 
so  at  a  time,  he  spoke  of  sorrow  and  death  ;  and  the  books  were 
closed  and  the  songs  silenced.  All  fear  for  Fanny's  safety  was, 
of  course,  over ;  all  necessity  for  her  work  ;  their  little  establish- 
ment was  increased.  She  never  stirred  out  without  Sarah ;  yet 
she  would  rather  that  there  had  been  some  danger  on  her  account 
for  him  to  guard  against,  or  some  trial  that  his  smile  might  soothe. 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

His  prolonged  absences  began  to  prey  upon  her ;  the  books 
ceased  to  interest ;  no  study  filled  up  the  dreary  gap — her  step 
grew  listless,  her  cheek  pale ;  she  was  sensible  at  last  that  his 
presence  had  become  necessary  to  her  very  life.  One  day,  he 
came  to  the  house  earlier  than  usual,  and  with  a  much  happier 
and  serener  expression  of  countenance  than  he  had  worn  of  late. 

Simon  was  dozing  in  his  chair,  with  his  old  dog,  now  scarce 
vigorous  enough  to  bark,  curled  up  at  his  feet.  Neither  man  nor 
dog  was  more  as  a  witness  to  what  was  spoken  than  the  leathern 
chair,  or  the  hearth-rug  on  which  they  severally  reposed. 

There  was  something  which,  in  actual  life,  greatly  contributed 
to  the  interest  of  Fanny's  strange  lot,  but  which,  in  narration,  I 
feel  I  cannot  make  sufficiently  clear  to  the  reader.  And  this  was 
her  connection  and  residence  with  that  old  man.  Her  character 
forming,  as  his  was  completely  gone  ;  here,  the  blank  becoming 
filled — there,  the  page  fading  to  a  blank.  It  was  the  utter,  total 
Deathliness-in-Life  of  Simon,  that,  while  so  impressive  to  see, 
renders  it  impossible  to  bring  him  before  the  reader,  in  his  full 
force  of  contrast  to  the  young  Psyche.  He  seldom  spoke — often, 
not  from  morning  till  night ;  he  now  seldom  stirred.  It  is  in  vain 
to  describe  the  indescribable :  let  the  leader  draw  the  picture  for 
himself.  And  whenever  (as  I  sometimes  think  he  will,  after  he 
has  closed  this  book)  he  conjures  up  the  idea  he  attaches  to  the 
name  of  its  heroine,  let  him  see  before  her,  as  she  glides  through 
the  humble  room ;  as  she  listens  to  the  voice  of  him  she  loves ; 
as  she  sits  musing  by  the  window,  with  the  church  spire  just  visi- 
ble ;  as  day  by  day  the  soul  brightens  and  expands  within  her — 
still  let  the  reader  see  within  the  same  walls,  gray-haired,  blind, 
dull  to  all  feeling,  frozen  to  all  life,  that  stony  image  of  Time  and 
Death  !  Perhaps  then  he  may  understand  why  they  who  beheld 
the  real  and  the  living  Fanny  blooming  under  that  chill  and  mass 
of  shadow,  felt  that  her  grace,  her  simplicity,  her  charming  beauty, 
were  raised  by  the  contrast,  till  they  grew  associated  with  thoughts 
and  images,  mysterious  and  profound,  belonging  not  more  to  the 
lovely  than  to  the  sublime. 

So  there  sat  the  old  man ;  and  Philip,  though  aware  of  his 
presence  speaking  as  if  he  were  alone  with  Fanny,  after  touching 
on  more  casual  topics,  thus  addressed  her  : 

"  My  true  and  my  dear  friend,  it  is  to  you  that  I  shall  owe, 
not  only  my  rights  and  fortune,  but  the  vindication  of  my  moth- 
er's memory.  You  have  not  only  placed  flowers  upon  that  grave- 
stone, but  it  is  owing  to  you,  under  Providence,  that  it  will  be 
inscribed  at  last  with  the  Name  which  refutes  all  calumny.  Young 
and  innocent  as  you  now  are,  my  gentle  and  beloved  benefactress. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  421 

you  cannot  as  yet  know  what  a  blessing  it  will  be  to  me  to  engrave 
that  name  upon  that  simple  stone.  Hereafter,  when  you  yourself 
are  a  wife,  a  mother,  you  will  comprehend  the  service  you  have 
rendered  to  the  living  and  the  dead  !  " 

He  stopped,  struggling  with  the  rush  of  emotions  that  over- 
flowed his  heart.  Alas,  THE  DEAD  !  what  service  can  we  render 
to  them  ?  What  availed  it  now,  either  to  the  dust  below,  or  to 
the  immortality  above,  that  the  fools  and  knaves  of  this  world 
should  mention  the  Catherine  whose  life  was  gone,  whose  ears 
were  deaf,  with  more  or  less  respect  ?  There  is  in  calumny  that 
poison  that,  even  when  the  character  throws  off  the  slander, 
the  heart  remains  diseased  beneath  the  effect.  They  say  that 
truth  comes  sooner  or  later ;  but  it  seldom  comes  before  the  soul, 
passing  from  agony  to  contempt,  has  grown  callous  to  men's 
judgments.  Calumniate  a  human  being  in  youth,  adulate  that 
being  in  age — what  has  been  the  interval?  Will  the  adulation 
atone  either  for  the  torture,  or  the  hardness  which  the  torture 
leaves  at  last  ?  And  if,  as  in  Catherine's  case,  (a  case,  how  com- 
mon !)  the  truth  come  too  late;  if  the  tomb  is  closed;  if  the 
heart  you  have  wrung  can  be  wrung  no  more — :why  the  truth  is  as 
valueless  as  the  epitaph  on  a  forgotten  Name  !  Some  such  con- 
viction of  the  hollowness  of  his  own  words,  when  he  spoke  of  ser- 
vice to  the  dead  smote  upon  Philip's  heart,  and  stopped  the  flow 
of  his  words. 

Fanny,  conscious  only  of  his  praise,  his  thanks,  and  the  tender 
affection  of  his  voice,  stood  still  silent,  her  eyes  downcast,  her 
breast  heaving. 

Philip  resumed  : 

"  And  now,  Fanny,  my  honored  sister,  I  would  thank  you  for 
more,  were  it  possible,  even  than  this.  I  shall  owe  to  you  not 
only  name  and  fortune,  but  happiness.  It  is  from  the  rights  to 
which  you  have  assisted  me,  and  which  will  shortly  be  made  clear, 
that  I  am  able  to  demand  a  hand  I  have  long  coveted — the  hand 
of  one  as  dear  to  me  as  you  are.  In  a  word,  the  time  has,  this 
day,  been  fixed,  when  I  shall  have  a  home  to  offer  to  you  and  to 
this  old  man  ;  when  I  can  present  to  you  a  sister  who  will  prize 
you  as  I  do  :  for  I  love  you  so  dearly — I  owe  you  so  much — that 
even  that  home  would  lose  half  its  smiles  if  you  were  not  there. 
Do  you  understand  me,  Fanny  ?  The  sister  I  speak  of  will  be 
my  wife  !  " 

The  poor  girl  who  heard  this  speech  of  most  cruel  tenderness, 
did  not  fall,  or  faint,  or  evince  any  outward  emotion,  except  in  a 
deadly  paleness.  She  seemed  like  one  turned  to  stone.  Her 
very  breath  forsook  her  for  some  moments,  and  then  came  back 


422  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

with  a  long,  deep  sigh.  She  laid  her  hand  lightly  upon  his  arm, 
and  said  calmly  : 

'  <  Yes — I  understand.  We  once  saw  a  wedding.  You  are  to 
be  married — I  shall  see  yours  !  " 

"  You  shall;  and,  later,  perhaps,  I  may  see  your  own.  I  have 
a  "brother.  Ah  !  if  I  could  but  find  him — younger  than  I  am — 
beautiful  almost  as  you  !  " 

"You  will  be  happy,"  said  Fanny,  still  calmly. 

"  I  have  long  placed  my  hopes  of  happiness  in  such  an  union  ! 
Stay,  where  are  you  going?  " 

"  To  pray  for  you,"  said  Fanny,  with  a  smile,  in  which  there 
was  something  of  the  old  vacancy,  and  she  walked  gently  from 
the  room.  Philip  followed  her  with  moistened  eyes.  Her  man- 
ner might  have  deceived  one  more  vain.  He  soon  after  quitted 
the  house,  and  returned  to  town. 

Three  hours  after,  Sarah  found  Fanny  stretched  on  the  floor  of 
her  own  room,  so  still,  so  white,  that,  for  some  moments,  the  old 
woman  thought  life  was  gone.  She  recovered,  however,  by 
degrees ;  and,  after  putting  her  hands  to  her  eyes,  and  muttering 
some  moments,  seemed  much  as  usual,  except  that  she  was  more 
silent,  and  that  her  lips  remained  colorless,  and  her  hands  cold 
like  stone. 

CHAPTER  XX. 

a  Vec. — Ye  see  what  follows. 
Duke. — O,  gentle  sir!  this  shape  again  !" — The  Chances. 

THAT  evening  Sidney  Beaufort  arrived  in  London.  It  is  the 
nature  of  solitude  to  make  the  passions  calm  on  the  surface,  agi  - 
tated  in  the  deeps.  Sidney  had  placed  his  whole  existence  in 
one  object.  When  the  letter  arrived  that  told  him  to  hope  no 
more,  he  was  at  first  rather  sensible  of  the  terrible  and  dismal 
blank — the  "  void  abyss" — to  which  all  his  future  was  suddenly 
changed,  than  roused  to  vehement  and  turbulent  emotion.  But 
Camilla's  letter  had,  as  we  have  seen,  raised  his  courage  and  ani- 
mated his  heart.  To  the  idea  of  her  faith  he  still  clung  with  the 
instinct  of  hope  in  the  midst  of  despair.  The  tidings  that  she- 
was  absolutely  betrothed  to  another,  and  in  so  short  a  time  since 
her  rejection  of  him,  let  loose  from  all  restraint  nis  darker  and 
more  tempestuous  passions.  In  a  state  of  mind  bordering  upon 
frenzy,  he  hurried  to  London,  to  seek  her,  to  see  her  ;  with  what 
intent,  what  hope — if  hope  there  were — he  himself  could  scarcely 
tell.  But  what  man  who  has  loved  with  fervor  and  trust  will  be 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  423 

contented  to  receive  the  sentence  of  eternal  separation  except 
from  the  very  lips  of  the  one  thus  worshipped  and  thus  forsworn  ? 

The  day  had  been  intensely  cold.  Towards  evening  the  snow 
fell  fast  and  heavily.  Sidney  had  not  since  a  child  been  before 
in  London ;  and  the  immense  City,  covered  with  a  wintry  and 
icy  mist,  through  which  the  hurrying  passengers  and  the  slow- 
moving  vehicles  passed,  spectre-like,  along  the  dismal  and  slip- 
pery streets,  opened  to  the  stranger  no  hospitable  arms.  He 
knew  not  a  step  of  the  way;  he  was  pushed  to  and  fro;  his  scarce 
intelligible  questions  impatiently  answered — the  snow  covered 
him,  the  frost  pierced  to  his  veins.  At  length  a  man,  more 
kindly  than  the  rest,  seeing  that  he  was  a  stranger  to  London, 
procured  him  a  hackney-coach,  and  directed  the  driver  to  the  dis- 
tant quarter  of  Berkeley  Square.  The  snow  balled  under  the 
hoofs  of  the  horses ;  the  groaning  vehicle  proceeded  at  the  pace  of 
a  hearse.  At  length,  and  after  a  period  of  such  suspense,  and 
such  emotion,  as  Sidney  never  in  after  life  could  recall  without  a 
shudder,  the  coach  stopped,  the  benumbed  driver  heavily 
descended,  the  sound  of  the  knocker  knelled  loud  through  the 
muffled  air,and  the  light  from  Mr.  Beaufort's  hall  glared  full  upon 
the  dizzy  eyes  of  the  visitor.  He  pushed  aside  the  porter,  and 
sprung  into  the  hall.  Luckily,  one  of  the  footmen  who  had 
attended  Mrs.  Beaufort  to  the  lakes  recognized  him;  and,  in 
answer  to  his  breathless  inquiry,  said  : 

"Why,  indeed,  Mr.  Spencer,  Miss  Beaufort  is  at  home — up 
stairs  in  the  drawing-room,  with  master  and  mistress,  and  Mon- 
sieur de  Vaudemont ;  but — " 

Sidney  waited  no  more.  He  bounded  up  the  stairs ;  he  opened 
the  first  door  that  presented  itself  to  him,  and  burst,  unannounced 
and  unlocked  for,  upon  the  eyes  of  the  group  seated  within.  He 
saw  not  the  terrified  start  of  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort ;  he  heeded  not 
the  faint,  nervous  exclamation  of  the  mother;  he  caught  not  the 
dark  and  wondering  glance  of  the  stranger  seated  beside  Camilla ; 
he  saw  but  Camilla  herself,  and  in  a  moment  he  was  at  her  feet. 

"  Camilla,  I  am  here  !  I,  who  love  you  so — I,  who  have  noth- 
ing in  the  world  but  you  !  I  am  here — to  learn  from  you,  and' 
you  alone,  if  I  am  indeed  abandoned ;  if  you  are  indeed  to  be 
another's!  " 

He  had  dashed  his  hat  from  his  brow  as  he  sprang  forward ; 
his  long  fair  hair,  damp  with  the  snows,  fell  disordered  over  his 
forehead ;  his  eyes  were  fixed,  as  for  life  and  death,  upon  the 
pale  face  and  trembling  lips  of  Camilla.  Robert  Beaufort,  in 
great  alarm,  and  well  aware  of  the  fierce  temper  of  Philip,  antici- 
pative  of  some  rash  and  violent  impulse,  turned  his  glance  upon 


424  NIGHT  AND   MORNING. 

his  destined  son-in-law.  But  there  was  no  angry  pride  in  the 
countenance  he  there  beheld.  Philip  had  risen,  but  his  frame 
was  bent — his  knees  knocked  together — his  lips  were  parted — his 
eyes  were  staring  full  upon  the  face  of  the  kneeling  man. 

Suddenly  Camilla,  sharing  her  father's  fear,  herself  half  rose, 
and  with  an  unconscious  pathos,  stretched  one  hand,  as  if  to 
shelter,  over  Sidney's  head,  and  looked  to  Philip.  Sidney's  eyes 
followed  hers.  He  sprang  to  his  feet. 

' '  What,  then,  it  is  true  !  And  this  is  the  man  for  whom  I  am 
abandoned  !  But  unless  you — you,  with  your  own  lips,  tell  me 
that  you  love  me  no  more — that  you  love  another — I  will  not 
yield  you  but  with  life." 

He  stalked  sternly  and  impetuously  up  to  Philip,  who  recoiled 
as  his  rival  advanced.  The  characters  of  the  two  men  seemed 
suddenly  changed.  The  timid  dreamer  seemed  dilated  into  the 
fearless  soldier.  The  soldier  seemed  shrinking,  quailing,  into 
nameless  terror.  Sidney  grasped  that  strong  arm,  as  Philip  still 
retreated,  with  his  slight  and  delicate  fingers — grasped  it  with 
violence  and  menace — and  frowning  into  the  face  from  which  the 
swarthy  blood  was  scared  away,  said,  in  a  hollow  whisper : 

' '  Do  you  hear  me  ?  Do  you  comprehend  me  ?  I  say,  that  she 
shall  not  be  forced  into  a  marriage  at  which  I  yet  believe  her 
heart  rebels.  My  claim  is  holier  than  yours.  Renounce  her,  or 
win  her  but  with  my  blood." 

Philip  did  not  apparently  hear  the  words  thus  addressed  to 
him.  His  whole  senses  seemed  absorbed  in  the  one  sense  of 
sight.  He  continued  to  gaze  upon  the  speaker  till  his  eye 
dropped  on  the  hand  that  yet  griped  his  arm.  And  as  he  thus 
looked,  he  uttered  an  inarticulate  cry.  He  caught  the  hand  in 
his  own,  and  pointed  to  a  ring  on  the  finger,  but  remained 
speechless.  Mr.  Beaufort  approached,  and  began  some  stam- 
mered words  of  soothing  to  Sidney,  but  Philip  motioned  him  to 
be  silent ;  and  at  last,  as  if  by  a  violent  effort,  gasped  forth,  not 
to  Sidney,  but  to  Beaufort, 

"His  name ?     His  name ?  " 

"It  is  Mr.  Spencer — Mr.  Charles  Spencer,"  cried  Beaufort. 
"  Listen  to  me,  I  will  explain  all — I — " 

"  Hush,  hush  !  "  cried  Philip  ;  and  turning  to  Sidney,  he  put 
his  hand  on  his  shoulder,  and  looking  him  full  in  the  face,  said  : 

"Have  you  not  known  another  name?  Are  you  not — yes,  it 
is  so — it  is — it  is  !  Follow  me — follow  !  " 

And  still  retaining  his  grasp,  and  leading  Sidney,  who  was  now 
subdued,  awed,  and  a  prey  to  new  and  wild  suspicions,  he  moved 
pn  gently,  stride  by  stride,  his  eyes  fixed  on  that  fair  face,  his 


NIGHT   ANTD    MORNING.  425 

lips  muttering,  till  the  closing  door  shut  both  forms  from  the  eyes 
of  the  three  there  left. 

It  was  the  adjoining  room  into  which  Philip  led  his  rival.  It 
was  lit  but  by  a  small  reading  lamp,  and  the  bright,  steady  blaze 
of  the  fire ;  and  by  this  light  they  both  continued  to  gaze  on 
each  other,  as  if  spellbound,  in  complete  silence.  At  last  Philip, 
by  an  irresistible  impulse,  fell  upon  Sidney's  bosom,  and  clasping 
him  with  convulsive  energy,  gasped  out : 

"  Sidney  !     Sidney  !     My  mother's  son  !  " 

"What!"  exclaimed  Sidney,  struggling  from  the  embrace, 
and  at  last  freeing  himself;  (C  it  is  you,  then!  You,  my  own 
brother !  You,  who  have  been  hitherto  the  thorn  in  my  path, 
the  cloud  in  my  fate  !  You,  who  are  now  come  to  make  me  a 
wretch  for  life  !  I  love  that  woman,  and  you  tear  her  from  me ! 
You,  who  subjected  my  infancy  to  hardship,  and,  but  for  Provi- 
dence, might  have  degraded  my  youth,  by  your  example,  into 
shame  and  guilt !  " 

"  Forbear  !  Forbear  !  "  cried  Philip,  with  a  voice  so  shrill  in 
its  agony  that  it  smote  the  hearts  of  those  in  the  adjoining 
chamber  like  the  shriek  of  some  despairing  soul.  They  looked 
at  each  other,  but  not  one  had  the  courage  to  break  upon  the 
interview. 

Sidney  himself  was  appalled  by  the  sound.  He  threw  himself 
on  a  seat,  and,  overcome  by  passions  so  new  to  him,  by  excite- 
ment so  strange,  hid  his  face,  and  sobbed  as  a  child. 

Philip  walked  rapidly  to  and  fro  the  room  for  some  moments ; 
at  length  he  paused  opposite  to  Sidney,  and  said,  with  the  deep 
calmness  of  a  wronged  and  goaded  spirit : 

"  Sidney  Beaufort,  hear  me  !  When  my  mother  died,  she  con- 
fided you  to  my  care,  my  love,  and  my  protection.  In  the  last  lines 
that  her  hand  traced,  she  bade  me  think  less  of  myself  than  of 
you  ;  to  be  to  you  as  a  father  as  well  as  brother.  The  hour  that 
I  read  that  letter  I  fell  on  my  knees,  and  vowed  that  I  would  ful- 
fil that  injunction ;  that  I  would  sacrifice  my  very  self,  if  I  could 
give  fortune  or  happiness  to  you.  And  this  not  for  your  sake 
alone,  Sidney ;  no  !  but  as  my  mother — our  wronged,  our  belied, 
our  broken-hearted  mother  ! — O  Sidney,  Sidney  !  have  you  no 
tears  for  her,  too  ?  ' '  He  passed  his  hand  over  his  own  eyes  for 
a  moment,  and  resumed  :  "  But  as  our  mother,  in  that  last  let- 
ter, said  to  me,  '  let  my  love  pass  into  your  breast  for  him,'  so, 
Sidney,  so,  in  all  that  I  could  do  for  you,  I  fancied  that  my 
mother's  smile  looked  down  upon  me,  and  that  in  serving  you  it 
was  my  mother  whom  I  obeyed.  Perhaps,  hereafter,  Sidney, 
when  we  talk  over  that  period  of  my  earlier  life  when  I  worked 


426  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

for  you,  when  the  degradation  you  speak  of  (there  was  no  crime 
in  it !)  was  borne  cheerfully  for  your  sake,  and  yours  the  holiday 
though  mine  the  task — perhaps,  hereafter,  you  will  do  me  more 
justice.  You  left  me,  or  were  reft  from  me,  and  I  gave  all  the 
little  fortune  that  my  mother  had  bequeathed  us,  to  get  some  tid- 
ings from  you.  I  received  your  letter — that  bitter  letter — and  I 
cared  not  then  that  I  was  a  beggar,  since  I  was  alone.  You  talk 
of  what  I  have  cost  you — you  talk  !  And  you  now  ask  me  to — 
to —  Merciful  Heaven  !  let  me  understand  you — do  you  love 
Camilla  ?  Does  she  love  you  ?  Speak — speak — explain — what 
new  agony  awaits  me?  " 

It  was  then  that  Sidney,  affected  and  humbled,  amidst  all  his 
more  selfish  sorrows,  by  his  brother's  language  and  manner,  re- 
lated, as  succinctly  as  he  could,  the  history  of  his  affection  for 
Camilla,  the  circumstances  of  their  engagement,  and  ended  by 
placing  before  him  the  letter  he  had  received  from  Mr.  Beaufort. 

In  spite  of  all  his  efforts  for  self-control,  Philip's  anguish  was 
so  great,  so  visible,  that  Sidney,  after  looking  at  his  working 
features,  his  trembling  hands,  for  a  moment,  felt  all  the  earthlier 
parts  of  his  nature  melt  in  a  flow  of  generous  sympathy  and  re- 
morse. He  flung  himself  on  the  breast  from  which  he  had  shrunk 
before,  and  cried : 

' '  Brother,  brother !  forgive  me ;  I  see  how  I  have  wronged 
you.  If  she  has  forgotten  me,  if  she  love  you,  take  her  and  be 
happy  ! ' ' 

Philip  returned  his  embrace,  but  without  warmth,  and  then 
moved  away;  and,  again,  in  great  disorder,  paced  the  room. 
His  brother  only  heard  disjointed  exclamations  that  seemed  to 
escape  him  unawares:  "  They  said  she  loved  me  !  Heaven  give 
me  strength  !  Mother — mother  !  Let  me  fulfil  my  vow !  Oh, 
that  I  had  died  ere  this!"  He  stopped  at  last,  and  the  large 
dews  rolled  down  his  forehead. 

"Sidney!"  said  he,  "there  is  a  mystery  here  that  I  compre- 
hend not.  But  my  mind  now  is  very  confused.  If  she  loves  you 
— if  ! — is  it  possible  for  a  woman  to  love  two  ?  Well,  well,  I  go 
to  solve  the  riddle :  wait  here ! ' ' 

He  vanished  into  the  next  room,  and  for  nearly  half  an  hour 
Sidney  was  alone.  He  heard  through  the  partition  murmured 
voices;  he  caught  more  clearly  the  sound  of  Camilla's  sobs.  The 
particulars  of  that  interview  between  Philip  and  Camilla,  alone 
at  first,  (afterwards  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort  was  re-admitted),  Philip 
never  disclosed,  nor  could  Sidney  himself  ever  obtain  a  clear 
account  from  Camilla,  who  could  not  recall  it,  even  years  after, 
without  great  emotion.  But  at  last  the  door  was  opened,  and 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  427 

Philip  entered,  leading  Camilla  by  the  hand.  His  face  was  calm, 
and  there  was  a  smile  on  his  lips ;  a  greater  dignity  than  even 
that  habitual  to  him  was  diffused  over  his  whole  person.  Camilla 
was  holding  her  handkerchief  to  her  eyes,  and  weeping  passion- 
ately. Mr.  Beaufort  followed  them  with  a  mortified  and  slinking 
air. 

"Sidney,"  said  Philip,  "it  is  past.  All  is  arranged.  I  yield 
to  your  earlier,  and  therefore  better,  claim.  Mr.  Beaufort  con- 
sents to  your  union.  He  will  tell  you,  at  some  fitter  time,  that 
our  birthright  is  at  last  made  clear,  and  that  there  is  no  blot  on 
the  name  we  shall  hereafter  bear.  Sidney,  embrace  your  bride !  " 

Amazed,  delighted,  and  still  half-incredulous,  Sidney  seized 
and  kissed  the  hand  of  Camilla ;  and  as  he  then  drew  her  to  his 
breast,  she  said,  as  she  pointed  to  Philip : 

"  Oh  !  if  you  do  love  me  as  you  say,  see  in  him  the  generous, 
the  noble — "  Fresh  sobs  broke  off  her  speech,  but  as  Sidney 
sought  again  to  take  her  hand,  she  whispered,  with  a  touching  and 
womanly  sentiment:  "Ah!  respect  him :  see! — "  and  Sidney, 
looking  then  at  his  brother,  saw,  that  though  he  still  attempted  to 
smile,  his  lip  writhed,  and  his  features  were  drawn  together,  as 
one  whose  frame  is  wrung  by  torture,  but  who  struggles  not  to 
groan. 

He  flew  to  Philip,  who,  grasping  his  hand,  held  him  back,  and 
said  : 

"I  have  fulfilled  my  vow  !  I  have  given  you  up  the  only  bless- 
ing my  life  has  known.  Enough  !  You  are  happy,  and  I  shall 
be  so,  too,  when  God  pleases  to  soften  this  blow.  And  now  you 
must  not  wonder  or  blame  me,  if,  though  so  lately  found,  I  leave 
you  for  awhile.  Do  me  one  kindness, — you  Sidney — you  Mr. 

Beaufort.  Let  the  marriage  take  place  at  H ,  in  the  village 

church  by  which  my  mother  sleeps ;  let  it  be  delayed  till  the  suit 
is  terminated ;  by  that  time  I  shall  hope  to  meet  you  all — to  meet 
you,  Camilla,  as  I  ought  to  meet  my  brother's  wife  :  till  then,  my 
presence  will  not  sadden  your  happiness.  Do  not  seek  to  see  me ; 
do  not  expect  to  hear  from  me.  Hist !  be  silent,  all  of  you ;  my 
heart  is  yet  bruised  and  sore.  O  THOU,"  and  here,  deepening 
his  voice,  he  raised  his  arms,  "Thou,  who  hast  preserved  my 
youth  from  such  snares  and  such  peril ;  who  hast  guided  my  steps 
from  the  abyss  to  which  they  wandered,  and  beneath  whose  hand 
I  now  bow,  grateful  if  chastened,  receive  this  offering,  and  bless 
that  union !  Fare  ye  well." 


428  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

"  Heaven's  airs  amid  the  harpstrings  dwell ; 

And  we  wish  they  ne'er  may  fade ; 
They  cease  ;  and  the  soul  is  a  silent  cell, 

Where  music  never  played. 
Dream  follows  dream  through  the  long  night-hours.' 

WILSON  :   The  Past,  a  poem. 

THE  self-command  which  Philip  had  obtained  for  a  while 
deserted  him  when  he  was  without  the  house.  His  mind  felt 
broken  up  into  chaos ;  he  hurried  on,  mechanically,  on  foot ;  he 
passed  street  upon  street,  now  solitary  and  deserted,  as  the  lamps 
gleamed  upon  the  thick  snow.  The  city  was  left  behind  him. 
He  paused  not,  till,  breathless,  and  exhausted  in  spirit  if  not  in 
frame,  he  reached  the  church-yard  where  Catherine's  dust  repos- 
ed. The  snow  had  ceased  to  fall,  but  it  lay  deep  over  the  graves ; 
the  yew-trees,  clad  in  their  white  shrouds,  gleamed  ghost-like 
through  the  dimness.  Upon  the  rail  that  fenced  the  tomb  yet 
hung  a  wreath  that  Fanny's  hand  had  placed  there.  But  the 
flowers  were  hid  ;  it  was  a  wreath  of  snow  !  Through  the  inter- 
vals of  the  huge  and  still  clouds  there  gleamed  a  few  melancholy 
stars.  The  very  calm  of  the  holy  spot  seemed  unutterably  sad. 
The  Death  of  the  year  overhung  the  Death  of  man.  And  as 
Philip  bent  over  the  tomb,  within  and  without  all  was  ICE  and 
NIGHT  ! 

For  hours  he  remained  on  that  spot,  alone  with  his  grief  and 
absorbed  in  his  prayer.  Long  past  midnight  Fanny  heard  his 
step  on  the  stairs,  and  the  door  of  his  chamber  close  with 
unwonted  violence.  She  heard,  too,  for  some  time,  his  heavy 
tread  on  the  floor,  till  suddenly  all  was  silent.  The  next  morn- 
ing, when,  at  the  usual  hour,  Sarah  entered  to  unclose  the  shut- 
ters and  light  the  fire,  she  was  startled  by  wild  exclamations  and 
wilder  laughter.  The  fever  had  mounted  to  the  brain — he  was 
delirous. 

For  several  weeks  Philip  Beaufort  was  in  imminent  danger ;  for 
a  considerable  part  of  that  time  he  was  unconscious ;  and  when 
the  peril  was  past,  his  recovery  was  slow  and  gradual.  It  was  the 
only  illness  to  which  his  vigorous  frame  had  ever  been  subjected : 
and  the  fever  had  perhaps  exhausted  him  more  than  it  might 
have  done  one  in  whose  constitution  the  disease  had  encountered 
less  resistance.  His  brother,  imagining  he  had  gone  abroad,  was 
unacquainted  with  his  danger.  None  tended  his  sick-bed  save 
the  hireling  nurse,  the  fee'd  physician,  and  the  unpurchasable 
heart  of  the  only  being  to  whom  the  wealth  and  rank  of  the  Heir 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  429 

of  Beaufort  Court  were  as  nothing.  Here  was  reserved  for  him 
Fate's  crowning  lesson,  in  the  vanity  of  those  human  wishes 
which  anchor  in  gold  and  power.  For  how  many  years  had  the 
exile  and  the  outcast  pined  indignantly  for  his  birthright !  Lo  !  it 
was  won  ;  and  with  it  came  the  crushed  heart  and  smitten  frame. 
As  he  slowly  recovered  sense  and  reasoning,  these  thoughts  struck 
him  forcibly.  He  felt  as  if  he  were  rightly  punished  in  having 
disdained,  during  his  early  youth,  the  enjoyments  within  his 
reach.  Was  there  nothing  in  the  glorious  health,  the  unconquer- 
able hope,  the  heart,  if  wrung,  and  chafed,  and  sorely  tried,  free 
at  least  from  the  direst  anguish  of  the  passions,  disappointed  and 
jealous  love?  Though  now  certain,  if  spared  to  the  future,  to  be 
rich,  powerful,  righted  in  name  and  honor,  might  he  not  from 
that  sick-bed  envy  his  earlier  past?  even  when  with  his  brother 
orphan  he  wandered  through  the  solitary  fields,  and  felt  with 
what  energies  we  are  gifted  when  we  have  something  to  protect; 
or  when  loving  and  beloved,  he  saw  life  smile  out  to  him  in  the 
eyes  of  Eugenie  ;  or  when,  after  that  melancholy  loss,  he  wrestled 
boldly,  and  breast  to  breast  with  Fortune,  in  a  far  land,  for  honor 
and  independence  ?  There  is  something  in  severe  illness,  especi- 
ally if  it  be  in  violent  contrast  to  the  usual  strength  of  the  body, 
which  has  often  the  most  salutary  effect  upon  the  mind  ;  which 
often,  by  the  affliction  of  the  frame,  roughly  wins  us  from  the  too 
morbid  pains  of  the  heart ;  which  makes  us  feel  that,  in  mere 
LIFE,  enjoyed  as  the  robust  enjoy  it,  God's  Great  Principle  of 
Good  breathes  and  moves.  We  rise  thus  from  the  sick-bed 
softened  and  humbled,  and  more  disposed  to  look  around  us  for 
such  blessings  as  we  may  yet  command. 

The  return  of  Philip,  his  danger,  the  necessity  of  exertion,  of 
tending  him,  had  roused  Fanny  from  a  state  which  might  other- 
wise have  been  permanently  dangerous  to  the  intellect  so  lately 
ripened  within  her.  With  what  patience,  with  what  fortitude, 
with  what  unutterable  thought  and  devotion,  she  fulfilled  that 
best  and  holiest  woman's  duty, — let  the  man  whose  struggle  with 
life  and  death  has  been  blessed  with  the  vigil  that  wakes  and 
saves,  imagine  to  himself.  And  in  all  her  anxiety  and  terror,  she 
had  glimpses  of  a  happiness  which  it  seemed  to  her  almost  crimi- 
nal to  acknowledge.  For,  even  in  his  delirium,  her  voice  seemed 
to  have  some  soothing  influence  over  him,  and  he  was  calmer 
while  she  was  by.  And  when  at  last  he  was  conscious,  her  face 
was  the  first  he  saw,  and  her  name  the  first  which  his  lips  uttered. 
As  then  he  grew  gradually  stronger,  and  the  bed  was  deserted  for 
the  sofa,  he  took  more  than  the  old  pleasure  in  hearing  her  read 
to  him ;  which  she  did  with  a  feeling  that  lecturers  cannot  teach. 


430  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

And  once,  in  a  pause  from  this  occupation,  he  spoke  to  her 
frankly  ;  he  sketched  his  past  history — his  last  sacrifice.  And 
Fanny,  as  she  wept,  learned  that  he  was  no  more  another's ! 

It  has  been  said  that  this  man,  naturally  of  an  active  and  impa- 
tient temperament,  had  been  little  accustomed  to  seek  those 
resources  which  are  found  in  books.  But  somehow  in  that  sick 
chamber,  it  was  Fanny's  voice — the  voice  of  her  over  whose  mind 
he  had  once  so  haughtily  lamented  that  taught  him  how  much  of 
aid  and  solace  the  Herd  of  Men  derive  from  the  Everlasting 
Genius  of  the  Few. 

Gradually,  and  interval  by  interval,  moment  by  moment,  thus 
drawn  together,  all  thought  beyond  shut  out  (for,  however  crush- 
ing for  the  time  the  blow  that  had  striken  Philip  from  health  and 
reason,  he  was  not  that  slave  to  a  guilty  fancy,  that  he  could 
voluntarily  indulge, — that  he  would  not  earnestly  seek  to  shun — 
all  sentiments  that  yet  turned  with  unholy  yearning  towards  the 
betrothed  of  his  brother) — gradually,  I  say,  and  slowly,  came 
those  progressive  and  delicious  epochs  which  mark  a  revolution  in 
the  affections :  unspeakable  gratitude,  brotherly  tenderness,  the 
united  strength  of  compassion  and  respect  that  he  had  felt  for 
Fanny  seemed,  as  he  gained  health,  to  mellow  into  feelings  yet 
more  exquisite  and  deep.  He  could  no  longer  delude  himself 
with  a  vain  and  imperious  belief  that  it  was  a  defective  mind 
that  his  heart  protected;  he  began  again  to  be  sensible  to  the 
rare  beauty  of  that  tender  face,  more  lovely,  perhaps,  for  the 
paleness  that  had  replaced  its  bloom.  The  fancy  that  he  had  so 
imperiously  checked  before — before  he  saw  Camilla,  returned  to 
him,  and  neither  pride  nor  honor  had  now  the  right  to  chase  the 
soft  wings  away.  One  evening,  fancying  himself  alone,  he  fell 
into  a  profound  reverie  ;  he  awoke  with  a  start,  and  the  exclama- 
tion :  "  Was  it  true  love  that  I  ever  felt  for  Camilla,  or  a  passion, 
a  frenzy,  a  delusion?" 

His  exclamation  was  answered  by  a  sound  that  seemed  both  of 
joy  and  grief.  He  looked  up,  and  saw  Fanny  before  him ;  the 
light  of  the  moon,  just  risen,  fell  full  on  her  form,  but  her  hands  were 
clasped  before  her  face ;  he  heard  her  sob. 

"  Fanny,  dear  Fanny  !  "  he  cried,  and  sought  to  throw  him- 
self from  the  sofa  to  her  feet.  But  she  drew  herself  away,  and 
fled  from  the  chamber  silent  as  a  dream. 

Philip  rose,  and,  for  the  first  time  since  his  illness,  walked,  but 
with  feeble  steps,  to  and  fro  the  room.  With  what  different  emo- 
tions from  those  in  which  last,  in  fierce  and  intolerable  agony,  he 
had  paced  that  narrow  boundary  !  Returning  health  crept 
through  his  veins  ;  a  serene,  a  kindly,  a  celestial  joy  circumfused 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  43! 

his  heart.  Had  the  time  yet  come  when  the  old  Florimel  had 
melted  into  snow ;  when  the  new  and  the  true  one,  with  its  warm 
life,  its  tender  beauty,  its  maiden  wealth  of  love,  had  risen  before 
his  hopes?  He  paused  before  the  window;  the  spot  within 
seemed  so  confined,  the  night  without  so  calm  and  lovely,  that  he 
forgot  his  still-clinging  malady,  and  unclosed  the  casement :  the 
air  came  soft  and  fresh  upon  his  temples,  and  the  church-tower 
and  spire,  for  the  first  time,  did  not  seem  to  him  to  rise  in  gloom 
against  the  heavens.  Even  the  grave-stone  of  Catherine,  half  in 
moonlight,  half  in  shadow,  appeared  to  him  to  wear  a  smile.  His 
mother's  memory  was  become  linked  with  the  living  Fanny. 

"  Thou  art  vindicated — thy  Sidney  is  happy,"  he  murmured  : 
"  to  her  the  thanks  !  " 

Fair  hopes,  and  soft  thoughts  busy  within  him,  he  remained  in 
the  casement  till  the  increasing  chill  warned  him  of  the  danger  he 
incurred. 

The  next  day,  when  the  physician  visited  him,  he  found  the 
fever  had  returned.  For  many  days  Philip  was  again  in  danger 
— dull,  unconscious  even  of  the  step  and  voice  of  Fanny. 

He  woke  at  last  as  from  a  long  and  profound  sleep — woke  so 
refreshed,  so  revived,  that  he  felt  at  once  that  some  great  crisis 
had  been  past,  and  that  at  length  he  had  struggled  back  to  the 
sunny  shores  of  Life. 

By  his  bedside  sat  Liancourt,  who,  long  alarmed  at  his  disap- 
pearance, had  at  last  contrived,  with  the  help  of  Mr.  Barlow,  to 
trace  him  to  Gawtrey's  house,  and  had  for  several  days  taken 
share  in  the  vigils  ot  poor  Fanny. 

While  he  was  yet  explaining  all  this  to  Philip,  and  congratulat- 
ing him  on  his  evident  recovery,  the  physician  entered  to  confirm 
the  congratulation.  In  a  few  days  the  invalid  was  able  to  quit  his 
room,  and  nothing  but  change  of  air  seemed  necessary  for  his 
convalescence.  It  was  then  that  Liancourt,  who  had  for  two  days 
seemed  impatient  to  unburden  himself  of  some  communication, 
thus  addressed  him : 

"  My  dear  friend,  1  have  learned  now  your  story  from  Barlow, 
who  called  several  times  during  your  relapse ;  and  who  is  the  more 
anxious  about  you,  as  the  time  for  the  decision  of  your  case  now 
draws  near.  The  sooner  you  quit  this  house  the  better." 

"  Quit  this  house!  and  why?  Is  there  not  one  in  this  house 
to  whom  I  owe  my  fortune  and  my  life?  " 

"  Yes ;  and  for  that  reason  I  say,  'Go  hence : '  it  is  the  only 
return  you  can  make  her." 

"Pshaw!  speak  intelligently." 

"I  will, "said  Liancourt,  gravely.     "I  have  been  a  watcher 


432  NIGHT    AND    MORNING. 

with  her  by  your  sick-bed,  and  I  know  what  you  must  feel 
already ;  nay,  I  must  confess  that  even  the  old  servant  has  ven- 
tured to  speak  to  me.  You  have  inspired  that  poor  girl  with  feel- 
ings dangerous  to  her  peace." 

"  Ha  !  "  cried  Philip,  with  such  joy  that  Liancourt  frowned, 
and  said:  "  Hitherto  I  have  believed  you  too  honorable  to — " 

"So  you  think  she  loves  me ?  "  interrupted  Philip. 

"Yes;  what  then?  You,  the  heir  of  Beaufort  Court;  of  a 
rental  of  ^20,000  a  year;  of  an  historical  name, — you  cannot 
marry  this  poor  girl  ?" 

"  Well  !  I  will  consider  what  you  say,  and  at  all  events,  I 
will  leave  the  house  to  attend  the  result  of  the  trial.  Let  us  talk 
no  more  on  the  subject  now." 

Philip  had  the  penetration  to  perceive  that  Liancourt,  who  was 
greatly  moved  by  the  beauty,  the  innocence,  and  the  unprotected 
position  of  Fanny,  had  not  confined  caution  to  himself  ;  that  with 
his  characteristic  well-meaning  bluntness,  and  with  the  license  of 
a  man  somewhat  advanced  in  years,  he  had  spoken  to  Fanny  her- 
self; for  Fanny  now  seemed  to  shun  Philip, — her  eyes  were  heavy, 
her  manner  was  embarrassed.  He  saw  the  change,  but  it  did  not 
grieve  him ;  he  hailed  the  omens  which  he  drew  from  it. 

And  at  last  he  and  Liancourt  went.  He  was  absent  three 
weeks,  during  which  time  the  formality  of  the  friendly  lawsuit 
was  decided  in  the  plaintiffs  favor ;  and  the  public  were  in  ecsta- 
cies  at  the  noble  and  sublime  conduct  of  Mr.  Robert  Beaufort : 
who,  the  moment  he  had  discovered  a  document  which  he  might 
easily  have  buried  forever  in  oblivion,  voluntarily  agreed  to  dis- 
possess himself  of  estates  he  had  so  long  enjoyed,  preferring  con- 
science to  lucre.  Some  persons  observed  that  it  was  reported  that 
Mr.  Philip  Beaufort  had  also  been  generous  :  that  he  had  agreed 
to  give  up  the  estates  for  his  uncle's  life,  and  was  only  in  the 
meanwhile  to  receive  a  fourth  of  the  revenues.  But  the  uni- 
versal comment  was,  "He  could  not  have  done  less!"  Mr. 
Robert  Beaufort  was,  as  Lord  Lilburne  had  once  observed,  a  man 
who  was  born,  made,  and  reared  to  be  spoken  well  of  by  the 
world ;  and  it  was  a  comfort  to  him  now,  poor  man,  to  feel  that 
his  character  was  so  highly  estimated.  If  Philip  should  live  to 
the  age  of  one  hundred,  he  will  never  become  so  respectable  and 
popular  a  man  with  the  crowd  as  his  worthy  uncle.  But  does  it 
much  matter? 

Philip  returned  to  H the  eve  before  the  day  fixed  for  the 

marriage  of  his  brother  and  Camilla. 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  433 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

NUKTO?— Aiflijpre  KOI  'H/uepa  cfeyecoiro.* — HES. 

THE  sun  of  early  May  shone  cheerfully  over  the  quiet  suburb 

of  H .  In  the  thoroughfares  life  was  astir.  It  was  the  hour 

of  noon — the  hour  at  which  commerce  is  busy,  and  streets  are 
full.  The  old  retired  trader,  eyeing  wistfully  the  rolling  coach 
or  the  oft-pausing  omnibus,  was  breathing  the  fresh  and  scented 
air  in  the  broadest  and  most  crowded  road,  from  which,  afar  in 
the  distance,  rose  the  spires  of  the  metropolis.  The  boy  let 
loose  from  the  day-school  was  hurrying  home  to  dinner,  his 
satchel  on  his  back  ;  the  ballad-singer  was  sending  her  cracked 
whine  through  the  obscurer  alleys,  where  the  baker's  boy,  with 
puddings  on  his  tray,  and  the  smart  maid-servant,  despatched  for 
porter,  paused  to  listen.  And  round  the  shops  where  cheap 
shawls  and  cottons  tempted  the  female  eye,  many  a  loitering  girl 
detained  her  impatient  mother,  and  eyed  the  tickets  and  calcu- 
lated her  hard-gained  savings  for  the  Sunday  gear.  And  in  the 
corners  of  the  streets  steamed  the  itinerant  kitchens  of  the  pie- 
men, and  rose  the  sharp  cry  :  "  All  hot !  All  hot  !  "  in  the  ear 
of  infant  and  ragged  hunger.  And  amidst  them  all  rolled  on 
some  lazy  coach  of  ancient  merchant  or  withered  maiden,  uncon- 
scious of  any  life,  but  that  creeping  through  their  own  languid 
veins.  And  before  the  house  in  which  Catherine  died  there 
loitered  many  stragglers,  gossips  of  the  hamlet,  subscribers  to  the 
news-room  hard  by,  to  guess,  and  speculate,  and  wonder  why, 
from  the  church  behind,  there  rose  the  merry  peal  of  the  mar- 
riage-bell ! 

At  length,  along  the  broad  road  leading  from  the  great  city, 
there  were  seen  rapidly  advancing  three  carriages  of  a  very  differ- 
ent fashion  from  those  familiar  to  the  suburb.  On  they  came ; 
swiftly  they  whirled  round  the  angle  that  conducted  to  the 
church;  the  hoofs  of  the  gay  steeds  ringing  cheerily  on  the 
ground ;  the  white  favors  of  the  servants  gleaming  in  the  sun. 
Happy  is  the  bride  the  sun  shines  on  !  And  when  the  carriages 
had  tjius  vanished,  the  scattered  groups  melted  into  one  crowd, 
and  took  their  way  to  the  church.  They  stood  idling  without  in 
the  burial-ground  ;  many  of  them  round  the  fence  that  guarded 
from  their  footsteps  Catherine's  lonely  grave.  All  in  nature  was 
glad,  exhilarating,  and  yet  serene;  a  genial  freshness,  breathed 
through  the  soft  air;  not  a  cloud  was  to  be  seen  in  the  smiling 
azure ;  even  the  old  dark  yews  seemed  happy  in  their  everlasting 

*  From  Night,  Sunshine  and  Day  arose! 
28 


434  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

verdure.  The  bell  ceased,  and  then  even  the  crowd  grew  silent; 
and  not  a  sound  was  heard  in  that  solemn  spot  to  whose  demesnes 
are  consecrated  alike  the  Birth,  the  Marriage,  and  the  Death. 

At  length  there  came  forth  from  the  church-door  the  goodly 
form  of  a  rosy  beadle.  Approaching  the  groups,  he  whispered 
the  better-dressed  and  commanded  the  ragged,  remonstrated  with 
the  old,  and  lifted  his  cane  against  the  young;  and  the  result  of 
all  was,  that  the  churchyard,  not  without  many  a  murmur  and 
expostulation,  was  cleared,  and  the  crowd  fell  back  in  the  space 
behind  the  gates  of  the  principal  entrance,  where  they  swayed 
and  gaped  and  chattered  round  the  carriages,  which  were  to  bear 
away  the  bridal  party. 

Within  the  church,  as  the  ceremony  was  now  concluded,  Philip 
Beaufort  conducted,  hand-in-hand,  silently  along  the  aisle,  his 
brother's  wife. 

Leaning  on  his  stick,  his  cold  sneer  upon  his  thin  lip,  Lord 
Lilburne  limped,  step  by  step  with  the  pair,  though  a  little  apart 
from  them,  glancing  from  moment  to  moment  at  the  face  of  Philip 
Beaufort,  where  he  had  hoped  to  read  a  grief  that  he  could  not 
detect.  Lord  Lilburne  had  carefully  refrained  from  an  interview 
with  Philip  till  that  day,  and  he  now  only  came  to  the  wedding 
as  a  surgeon  goes  to  an  hospital  to  examine  a  disease  he  had  been 
told  would  be  great  and  sore:  he  was  disappointed.  Close 
behind  followed  Sidney,  radiant  with  joy,  and  bloom,  and 
beauty  ;  and  his  kind  guardian,  the  tears  rolling  down  his  eyes, 
murmured  blessings  as  he  looked  upon  him.  Mrs.  Beaufort  had 
declined  attending  the  ceremony — her  nerves  were  too  weak — 
but,  behind,  at  a  longer  interval,  came  Robert  Beaufort,  sober, 
staid,  collected  as  ever  to  outward  seeming  ;  but  a  close  observer 
might  have  seen  that  his  eye  had  lost  its  habitual  complacent 
cunning,  that  his  step  was  more  heavy,  his  stoop  more  joyless. 
About  his  air  there  was  a  something  crestfallen.  The  conscious- 
ness of  acres  had  passed  away  from  his  portly  presence ;  he  was 
no  longer  a  possessor,  but  a  pensioner.  The  rich  man,  who  had 
decided  as  he  pleased  on  the  happiness  of  others,  was  a  cipher ; 
he  had  ceased  to  have  any  interest  in  anything.  What  to  him 
the  marriage  of  his  daughter  now  ?  Her  children  would  not  be 
the  heirs  of  Beaufort.  As  Camilla  kindly  turned  round,  and 
through  happy  tears  waited  for  his  approach,  to  clasp  his  hand, 
he  forced  a  smile,  but  it  was  sickly  and  piteous.  He  longed  to 
creep  away,  and  be  alone. 

"  My  father  !  "  said  Camilla,  in  her  sweet  low  voice;  and  she 
extricated  herself  from  Philip,  and  threw  herself  on  his  breast. 

"She  is  a  good  child,"  said  Robert  Beaufort,  vacantly;  and' 


NIGHT   AND    MORNING.  435 

turning  his  dry  eyes  to  the  group,  he  caught  instinctively  at  his 
customary  commonplaces:  "And,  a  good  child,  Mr.  Sidney, 
makes  a  good  wife  !  " 

The  clergyman  bowed  as  if  the  compliment  were  addressed  to 
himself:  he  was  the  only  man  there  whom  Robert  Beaufort  could 
now  deceive. 

"  My  sister,"  said  Philip  Beaufort,  as  once  more  leaning  on  his 
arm,  they  paused  before  the  church-door,  "m^y  Sidney  love  and 
prize  you  as — as  I  would  have  done ;  and  believe  me,  both  of 
you,  I  have  no  regret,  no  memory  that  wounds  me  now." 

He  dropped  the  hand,  and  motioned  to  her  father  to  lead  her 
to  the  carriage.  Then  winding  his  arm  into  Sidney's,  he  said  : 

"  Wait  till  they  are  gone :  1  have  one  word  yet  with  you.  Go 
on,  gentlemen." 

The  clergyman  bowed,  and  walked  through  the  churchyard. 
But  Lilburne,  pausing  and  surveying  Philip  Beaufort,  said  to 
him,  whisperingly : 

"  And  so  much  for  feeling — the  folly  !  So  much  for  generosity 
— the  delusion  !  Happy  man  !  " 

"I  am  thoroughly  happy,  Lord  Lilburne." 

"Are  you?  Then,  it  was  neither  feeling  nor  generosity;  and 
we  were  taken  in!  Good-day."  With  that  he  limped  slowly  to 
the  gate. 

Philip  answered  not  the  sarcasm  even  by  a  look.  For,  at  that 
moment,  a  loud  shout  was  set  up  by  the  mob  without — they  had 
caught  a  glimpse  of  the  bride. 

"  Come,  Sidney,  this  way,"  he  said ;  "I  must  not  detain  you 
long." 

Arm  in  arm  they  passed  out  of  the  church,  and  turned  to  the 
spot  hard  by,  where  the  flowers  smiled  up  to  them  from  the  stone 
on  their  mother's  grave. 

The  old  inscription  had  been  effaced,  and  the  name  of  CATH- 
ERINE BEAUFORT  was  placed  upon  the  stone. 

"Brother,"  said  Philip,  "do  not  forget  this  grave:  years 
hence,  when  children  play  around  your  own  hearth.  Observe,  the 
name  of  Catherine  Beaufort  is  fresher  on  the  stone  than  the  dates 
of  birth  and  death — the  name  was  only  inscribed  there  to-day — 
your  wedding-day  !  Brother,  by  this  grave  we  are  now  indeed 
united." 

"  Oh,  Philip!  "  cried  Sidney,  in  deep  emotion,  clasping  the 
hand  stretched  out  to  him;  "  I  feel,  I  feel  how  noble,  how  great 
you  are — that  you  have  sacrificed  more  than  I  dreamed  of — " 

"Hush  !"  said  Philip,  with  a  smile.     "  No  talk  of  this.     I 


436  NIGHT   AND   MORNING. 

am  happier  than  you  deem  me.     Go  back  now — she  waits  you." 

"  And  you  ?     Leave  you  ! — alone  !  " 

"  Not  alone,"  said  Philip,  pointing  to  the  grave. 

Scarce  had  he  spoken  when,  from  the  gate,  came  the  shrill, 
clear  voice  of  Lord  Lilburne : 

"We  wait  for  Mr.  Sidney  Beaufort." 

Sidney  passed  his  hand  over  his  eyes,  wrung  the  hand  of  his 
brother  once  more,  and  in  a  moment  was  by  Camilla's  side. 

Another  shout — the  whirl  of  the  wheels — the  tramping  of  feet 
.—the  distant  hum  and  murmur — and  all  was  still. 

The  clerk  returned  to  lock  up  the  church  ;  he  did  not  observe 
where  Philip  stood  in  the  shadow  of  the  wall  and  went  home  to 
talk  of  the  gay  wedding,  and  inquire  at  what  hour  the  funeral  of 
a  young  woman,  his  next-door  neighbor,  would  take  place  the 
next  day. 

It  might  be  a  quarter  of  an  hour  after  Philip  was  thus  left — nor 
had  he  moved  from  the  spot — when  he  felt  his  sleeve  pulled  gently. 
He  turned  round  and  saw  before  him  the  wistful  face  of  Fanny  ! 
'  So  you  would  not  come  to  the  wedding?  "  said  he. 
No.  But  I  fancied  you  might  be  here  alone, — and  sad." 
'  And  you  will  not  even  wear  the  dress  I  gave  you  ?  " 
Another  time.  Tell  me,  are  you  unhappy?" 
'  Unhappy,  Fanny !  No ;  look  around.  The  very  burial- 
ground  has  a  smile.  See  the  laburnums  clustering  over  the  wall; 
listen  to  the  birds  on  the  dark  yews  above  ;  and  yonder  see  even 
the  butterfly  has  settled  upon  her  grave!  I  am  not  unhappy." 
As  he  thus  spoke  he  looked  at  her  earnestly,  and,  taking  both  her 
hands  in  his,  drew  her  gently  towards  him,  and  continued  : 
11  Fanny,  do  you  remember,  that,  leaning  over  that  gate,  I  once 
spoke  to  you  of  the  happiness  of  marriage  where  two  hearts  are 
united.  Nay,  Fanny,  nay,  I  must  go  on.  It  was  here  in  this 
spot, — it  was  here  that  I  first  saw  you  on  my  return  to  England. 
I  came  to  seek  the  dead,  and  I  have  thought  since,  it  was  my 
mother's  guardian  spirit  that  drew  me  hither  to  find  you — the 
living  !  And  often  afterwards,  Fanny,  you  would  come  with  me 
here,  when,  blinded  and  dull  as  I  was,  I  came  to  brood  and  to 
repine,  insensible  of  the  treasures  even  then  perhaps  within  my 
reach.  But,  best  as  it  was;  the  ordeal  through  which  I  have 
passed  has  made  me  more  grateful  for  the  prize  I  now  dare  to 
hope  for.  On  this  grave  your  hand  daily  renewed  the  flowers. 
£y  this  grave,  the  link  between  the  Time  and  the  Eternity,  whose 
lessons  we  have  read  together,  will  you  consent  to  record  our 
vows?  Fanny,  dearest,  fairest,  tenderest,  best,  I  love  you,  and 
at  last  as  alone  you  should  be  loved  !  I  woo  you  as  my  wife  1 


NIGHT   AND   MORNING.  43? 

Mine,  not  for  a  season,  but  forever — forever,  even  when  these 
graves  are  opened,  and  the  World  shrivels  like  a  scroll.  Do  you 
understand  me?  Do  you  heed  me?  Or  have  I  dreamed  that 
that—" 

He  stopped  short — a  dismay  seized  him  at  her  silence.  Had 
he  been  mistaken  in  his  divine  belief  ?  The  fear  was  momentary  : 
for  Fanny,  who  had  recoiled  as  he  spoke,  now  placing  her  hands 
to  her  temples,  gazing  on  him,  breathless  and  with  lips  apart,  as 
if,  indeed,  with  great  effort  and  struggle  her  modest  spirit  con- 
ceived the  possibility  of  the  happiness  that  broke  upon  it,  advanced 
timidly,  her  face  suffused  in  blushes ;  and,  looking  into  his  eyes, 
as  if  she  would  read  into  his  very  soul,  said,  with  an  accent,  the 
intenseness  of  which  showed  that  her  whole  fate  hung  on  his 
answer : 

"But  this  is  pity?  They  have  told  you  that  I — in  short,  you 
are  generous — you — you — Oh,  deceive  me  not  !  Do  you  love  her 
still?  Can  you — do  you  love  the  humble,  foolish  Fanny?  " 

"  As  God  shall  judge  me,  sweet  one,  I  am  sincere  !  I  have 
survived  a  passion — never  so  deep,  so  tender,  so  entire  as  that  I 
now  feel  for  you  !  And  oh,  Fanny,  hear  this  true  confession  !  It 
was  you — you  to  whom  my  heart  turned  before  I  saw  Camilla  ! 
Against  that  impulse  I  struggled  in  the  blindness  of  a  haughty 
error !  " 

Fanny  uttered  a  low  and  suppressed  cry  of  delight  and  rapture. 
Philip  passionately  continued  : 

"  Fanny,  make  blessed  the  life  you  have  saved.  Fate  destined 
us  for  each  other.  Fate  for  me  has  ripened  your  sweet  mind. 
Fate  for  you  has  softened  this  rugged  heart.  We  may  have  yet 
much  to  bear  and  much  to  learn.  We  will  console  and  teach  each 
other !  " 

He  drew  her  to  his  breast  as  he  spoke — drew  her  trembling, 
blushing,  confused,  but  no  more  reluctant ;  and  there,  by  the 
GRAVE  that  had  been  so  memorable  a  scene  in  their  common  his- 
tory, were  murmured  those  vows  in  which  all  this  world  knows  <>' 
human  happiness  is  treasured  and  recorded — love  that  takes  thi 
sting  from  grief,  and  faith  that  gives  eternity  to  love.  All  silent, 
yet  all  serene  around  them !  Above,  the  heaven  ;  at  their  feet, 
the  grave :  For  the  love,  the  grave  ! — for  the  faith,  the  heaven  ! 


438  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

CHAPTER  THE  LAST. 
"  A  labore  reclinat  otium."* — HORAT. 

I  FEEL  that  there  is  some  justice  in  the  affection  the  general 
reader  entertains  for  the  old-fashioned,  and  now  somewhat  obso- 
lete custom,  of  giving  to  him,  at  the  close  of  a  work,  the  latest 
news  of  those  who  sought  his  acquaintance  through  its  progress. 

The  weak,  but  well-meaning  Smith,  no  more  oppressed  by  the 
evil  influence  of  his  brother,  has  continued  to  pass  his  days  in 
comfort  and  respectability  on  the  income  settled  on  him  by  Philip 
Beaufort.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Roger  Morton  still  live,  and  have  just 
resigned  thdr  business  to  their  eldest  son  ;  retiring  themselves  to 
a  small  villa  adjoining  the  town  in  which  they  had  made  their 
fortune.  Mrs.  Morton  is  very  apt,  when  she  goes  out  to  tea,  to 
talk  of  her  dear  deceased  sister-in-law,  the  late  Mrs.  Beaufort, 
and  of  her  own  remarkable  kindness  to  her  nephew  when  a  little 
boy.  She  observes  that,  in  fact,  the  young  men  owe  everything 
to  Mr.  Roger  and  herself;  and,  indeed,  though  Sidney  was  never 
of  a  grateful  disposition,  and  has  not  been  near  her  since,  yet  the 
elder  brother,  the  Mr.  Beaufort,  always  evinces  his  respect  to 
them  by  the  yearly  present  of  a  fat  buck.  She  then  comments  on 
the  ups  and  downs  of  life ;  and  observes  that  it  is  a  pity  her  son 
Tom  preferred  the  medical  profession  to  the  church.  Their 
cousin,  Mr.  Beaufort,  has  two  livings.  To  all  this  Mr.  Roger 
says  nothing,  except  an  occasional.  "  Thank  heaven,  I  want  no 
man's  help !  I  am  as  well-to-do  as  my  neighbors.  But  that's 
neither  here  nor  there." 

There  are  some  readers — they  who  do  not  thoroughly  consider 
the  truths  of  this  life. — who  will  yet  ask,  "  But  how  is  Lord  Lil- 
burne  punished  !  "  Punished  !  Ay  and  indeed,  how  !  The 
world,  and  not  the  poet,  must  answer  that  question.  Crime  is 
punished  from  without.  If  Vice  is  punished,  it  must  be  from 
within.  The  Lilburnes  of  this  hollow  world  are  not  to  be  pelted 
with  the  soft  roses  of  poetical  justice.  They  who  ask  why  he  is 
not  punished,  may  be  the  first  to  doff  the  hat  to  the  equipage  in 
which  my  lord  lolls  through  the  streets  !  The  only  offence  he 
habitually  committed  of  a  nature  to  bring  the  penalties  of  detec- 
tection,  he  renounced  the  moment  he  perceived  there  was  danger 
of  discovery  !  He  gambled  no  more  after  Philip's  hint.  He  was 
one  of  those,  some  years  after,  most  bitter  upon  a  certain  noble- 
man charged  with  unfair  play ;  one  of  those  who  took  the  accu- 
sation as  proved  ;  and  whose  authority  settled  all  disputes  thereon. 

#  Leisure  unbends  itself  from  labor. 


NIGHT    AND    MORN7 ING.  439 

But,  if  no  thunderbolt  falls  on  Lord  Lilburne's  head ;  if  he  is 
fated  still  to  eat,  and  drink,  and  to  die  on  his  bed,  he  may  yet 
taste  the  ashes  of  the  Dead  Sea  fruit  which  his  hands  have  culled. 
He  is  grown  old.  His  infirmities  increase  upon  him ;  his  sole 
resources  of  pleasure — the  senses — are  dried  up.  For  him  there  is 
no  longer  savor  in  the  viands,  or  sparkle  in  the  wine;  man 
delights  him  not,  nor  woman  neither.  He  is  alone  with  Old  Age, 
and  in  sight  of  Death. 

With  the  exception  of  Simon,  who  died  in  his  chair  not  many 
days  after  Sidney's  marriage,  Robert  Beaufort  is  the  only  one 
among  the  more  important  agents  left  at  the  last  scene  of  this  his- 
tory who  has  passed  from  our  mortal  stage.  After  the  marriage 
of  his  daughter  he  for  some  time  moped  and  drooped. 

But  Philip  learned  from  Mr.  Blackwell  of  the  will  that  Robert 
had  made  previously  to  the  lawsuit;  and  by  which,  had  the  law- 
suit failed,  his  rights  would  yet  have  been  preserved  to  him. 
Deeply  moved  by  a  generosity  he  could  not  have  expected  from 
his  uncle,  and  not  pausing  to  inquire  too  closely  how  far  it  was  to 
be  traced  to  the  influence  of  Arthur,  Philip  so  warmly  expressed 
his  gratitude,  and  so  surrounded  Mr.  Beaufort  with  affectionate 
attentions,  that  the  poor  man  began  to  recover  his  self-respect ; 
began  even  to  regard  the  nephew  he  had  so  long  dreaded,  as  a 
son ;  to  forgive  him  for  not  marrying  Camilla.  And,  perhaps, 
to  his  astonishment,  an  act  in  his  life  for  which  the  customs  of 
the  world  (that  never  favor  natural  ties  not  previously  sanctioned 
by  the  legal)  would  have  rather  censured  than  praised,  became 
his  consolation  ;  and  the  memory  he  was  most  proud  to  recall. 
He  gradually  recovered  his  spirits;  he  was  very  fond  of  looking 
over  that  will ;  he  carefully  preserved  it ;  he  even  flattered  him- 
self that  it  was  necessary  to  preserve  Philip  from  all  possible  liti- 
gation hereafter ;  for  if  the  estates  were  not  legally  Philip's,  why, 
then,  they  were  his  to  dispose  of  as  he  pleased.  He  was  never 
more  happy  than  when  his  successor  was  by  his  side;  and  was 
certainly  a  more  cheerful,  and,  I  doubt  not,  a  better  man,  during 
the  few  years  in  which  he  survived  the  lawsuit,  than  ever  he  had 
been  before.  He  died — still  member  for  the  county,  and  still 
quoted  as  a  pattern  to  county  members — in  Philip's  arms ;  and 
on  his  lips  there  was  a  smile  that  even  Lilburne  would  have  called 
sincere. 

Mrs.  Beaufort,  after  her  husband's  death,  established  herself  in 
London  ;  and  could  never  be  persuaded  to  visit  Beaufort  Court. 
She  took  a  companion,  who  more  than  replaced,  in  her  eyes,  the 
absence  of  Camilla. 

And  Camilla — Spencer — Sidney.     They  live  still  by  the  gentle 


44°  NIGHT   AND    MORNING. 

Lake,  happy  in  their  own  serene  joys  and  graceful  leisure  ;  shun- 
ning alike  ambition  and  its  trials,  action  and  its  sharp  vicissi- 
tudes ;  envying  no  one,  covetous  of  nothing  ;  making  around 
them,  in  the  working  world,  something  of  the  old  pastoral  and 
golden  holiday.  If  Camilla  had  at  one  time  wavered  in  her  alle- 
giance to  Sidney,  her  good  and  simple  heart  has  long  since  been 
entirely  regained  by  his  devotion  ;  and,  as  might  be  expected 
from  her  disposition,  she  loved  him  better  after  marriage  than 
before. 

Philip  had  gone  through  severer  trials  than  Sidney.  But,  had 
their  earlier  fates  been  reversed,  and  that  spirit,  in  youth  so 
haughty  and  self-willed,  been  lapped  in  ease  and  luxury,  would 
Philip  now  be  a  better  or  a  happier  man  ?  Perhaps,  too,  for  a 
less  tranquil  existence  than  his  brother,  Philip  yet  may  be 
reserved ;  but,  in  proportion  to  the  uses  of  our  destiny,  do  we 
repose  or  toil :  he  who  never  knows  pain  knows  but  the  half  of 
pleasure.  The  lot  of  whatever  is  most  noble  on  the  earth  below 
falls  not  amidst  the  rosy  Gardens  of  the  Epicurean.  We  may 
envy  the  man  who  enjoys  and  rests  ;  but  the  smile  of  Heaven  set- 
tles rather  on  the  front  of  him  who  labors  and  aspires. 

And  did  Philip  ever  regret  the  circumstances  that  had  given 
him  Fanny  for  the  partner  of  his  life?  To  some  who  take  their 
notions  of  the  Ideal  from  the  conventional  rules  of  romance, 
rather  than  from  their  own  perceptions  of  what  is  true,  this  narra- 
tive would  have  been  more  pleasing  had  Philip  never  loved  but 
Fanny.  But  all  that  had  led  to  that  love  had  only  served  to  ren- 
der it  more  enduring  and  concentred.  Man's  strongest  and 
worthiest  affection  is  his  last ;  is  the  one  that  unites  and  embodies 
all  his  past  dreams  of  what  is  excellent ;  the  one  from  which  Hope 
springs  out  the  brighter  from  tormer  disappointments  ;  the  one  in 
which  the  MEMORIES  are  the  most  tender  and  the  most  abundant ; 
the  one  which,  replacing  all  others,  nothing  hereafter  can  replace. 

And  now,  ere  the  scene  closes,  and  the  audience,  whom  per- 
haps the  actors  may  have  interested  for  awhile,  disperse,  to  forget 
amidst  the  pursuits  of  actual  life  the  Shadows  that  have  amused 
an  hour,  or  beguiled  a  care,  let  the  curtain  fall  on  one  happy  pic- 
ture : 

It  is  some  years  after  the  marriage  of  Philip  and  Fanny.  It 
is  a  summer's  morning.  In  a  small  old-fashioned  room  at 
Beaufort  Court,  with  its  casements  open  to  the  gardens,  stood 
Philip,  having  just  entered  ;  and  near  the  window  sat  Fanny, 
his  boy  by  her  side.  She  was  at  the  mother's  hardest  task 
— the  first  lessons  to  the  first-born  child;  and  as  the  boy 


NIGHT    AND    MORNING.  441 

looked  up  at  her  sweet  earnest  face  with  a  smile  of  intelli- 
gence on  his  own,  you  might  have  seen  at  a  glance  how  well 
understood  were  the  teacher  and  the  pupil.  Yes  ;  whatever  might 
have  been  wanting  in  the  Virgin  to  the  full  development  of  mind, 
the  cares  of  the  Mother  had  supplied.  When  a  being  was  born 
to  lean  on  her  alone — dependent  on  her  providence  for  life — 
then,  hour  after  hour,  step  after  step,  in  the  progress  of  infant 
destinies,  had  the  reason  of  the  mother  grown  in  the  child's 
growth,  adapting  itself  to  each  want  that  it  must  foresee,  and  tak- 
ing its  perfectness  and  completion  from  the  breath  of  the  New 
Love  ! 

The  child  caught  sight  of  Philip  and  rushed  to  embrace  him. 

"See!"  whispered  Fanny,  as  she  also  hung  upon  him,  and 
strange  recollections  of  her  own  mysterious  childhood  crowded 
upon  her  ;  "  See,"  whispered  she,  with  a  blush  half  of  shame  and 
half  of  pride,  "  the  poor  idiot  girl  is  the  teacher  of  your  child  !  " 

"  And,"  answered  Philip,  "  whether  for  child  or  mother,  what 
teacher  is  like  Love?" 

Thus  saying,  he  took  the  boy  into  his  arms ;  and,  as  he  bent 
over  those  rosy  cheeks,  Fanny  saw,  from  the  movement  of  his  lips 
and  the  moisture  in  his  eyes,  that  he  blessed  God.  He  looked 
up  on  the  Mother's  face,  he  glanced  round  on  the  flowers  and 
foliage  of  the  luxurious  summer,  and  again  he  blessed  God  :  And 
without  and  within,  it  was  Light  and  MORNING  ! 


THE  END. 


GODOLPHIN 


TO 

COUNT  ALFRED  D'ORSAY. 


MY  DEAR  COUNT  D'ORSAY  : 

When  the  parentage  of  Godolphin  was  still  unconfessed  and  unknown, 
you  were  pleased  to  encourage  his  first  struggles  with  the  world  :  Now,  will 
you  permit  the  father  he  has  just  discovered  to  re-introduce  him  to  your  no- 
tice ?  I  am  sorry  to  say,  however,  that  my  unfilial  offspring,  having  been  so 
long  disowned,  is  not  sufficienily  grateful  for  being  acknowledged  at  last: 
he  says  that  he  belongs  to  a  very  numerous  family,  and,  wishing  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  his  brothers,  desires  not  only  to  reclaim  your  acquaintance, 
but  to  borrow  your  name.  Nothing  less  will  content  his  ambition  than  the 
most  public  opportunity  in  his  power  of  parading  his  obligations  to  the  most 
accomplished  gentleman  of  our  time.  Will  you,  then,  allow  him  to  make 
his  new  appearance  in  the  world  under  your  wing,  and  thus  suffer  the  son  as 
well  as  the  father  to  attest  the  kindness  of  your  heart  and  to  boast  the  honor 
of  your  friendship  ? 

Believe  me, 
My  dear  Count  d'Orsay, 

With  the  sincerest  regard, 

Yours,  very  faithfully  and  truly, 
E.  B.  L. 


PREFACE  TO  GODOLPHIN. 


IN  the  Prefaces  to  this  edition  of  my  works,  I  have  occasionally  so  far 
availed  myself  of  that  privilege  of  self-criticism  which  the  French  comic 
writer,  Mons.  Picord,  maintains  or  exemplifies  in  the  collection  of  his 
plays, — as,  if  not  actually  to  sit  in  judgment  on  my  own  performances,  still 
to  insinuate  some  excuse  for  their  faults  by  extenuatory  depositions  as  to 
their  character  and  intentions.  Indeed  a  writer  looking  back  to  the  past, 
is  unconsciously  inclined  to  think  that  he  may  separate  himself  from  those 
children  of  his  brain  which  have  long  gone  forth  to  the  world;  and  though 
he  may  not  expatiate  on  the  merits  his  parental  affection  would  ascribe  to 
them,  that  he  may  speak  at  least  of  the  mode  in  which  they  were  trained  and 
reared — of  the  hopes  he  cherished,  or  the  objects  he  entertained,  when  he 
finally  dismissed  them  to  the  opinions  of  others  and  the  ordeal  of  Fate  or 
Time. 

For  my  part,  I  own  that  even  when  I  have  thought  but  little  of  the  value 
of  a  work,  1  have  always  felt  an  interest  in  the  author's  account  of  its  origin 
and  formation,  and,  willing  to  suppose  that  what  thus  affords  a  gratification 
to  my  own  curiosity  may  not  be  wholly  unattractive  to  others,  I  shall  thus 
continue  from  time  to  time  to  play  the  Showman  to  my  own  machinery,  and 
explain  the  principle  of  the  mainspring  and  the  movement  of  the  wheels. 

This  novel  was  begun  somewhere  in  the  third  year  of  my  authorship,  and 
completed  in  the  fourth.  It  was,  therefore,  composed  almost  simultaneously 
with  Eugene  Aram,  and  afforded  to  me  at  least  some  relief  from  the  gloom 
of  that  village  tragedy.  It  is  needless  to  observe  how  dissimilar  in  point  of 
scene,  character,  and  fable,  the  one  is  from  the  other  :  yet  they  are  alike  in 
this — that  both  attempt  to  deal  with  one  of  the  most  striking  problems  on 
the  spiritual  history  of  man,  viz.,  the  frustration  or  abuse  of  power  in  a  supe- 
rior intellect  originally  inclined  to  good.  Perhaps  there  is  no  problem 
that  more  fascinates  the  attention  of  a  man  of  some  earnestness  at  that  pe- 
riod of  his  life,  when  his  eye  first  disengages  itself  from  the  external  phe- 
nomena around  him,  and  his  curiosity  leads  him  to  examine  the  cause  and 
account  for  the  effect  ; — when,  to  cite  reverently  the  words  of  the  wisest, 
"  He  applies  his  heart  to  know  and  to  search,  and  to  seek  out  wisdom  and 
the  reason  of  things,  and  to  know  the  wickedness  of  folly,  even  of  foolish- 
ness and  madness." 

In  Eugene  Aram,  the  natural  career  of  genius  is  arrested  by  a  single 
crime  ;  in  Godolphin,  a  mind  of  inferior  order,  but  more  fanciful  coloring,  is 
wasted  away  by  the  indulgence  of  those  morbid  sentiments  which  are  the 
nourishment  of  egotism,  and  the  gradual  influence  of  the  frivolities  which 
make  the  business  of  the  idle.  Here,  the  Demon  tempts  or  destroys  the 
hermit  in  his  solitary  cell.  There  he  glides  amidst  the  pomps  and  vanities 
of  the  world,  and  whispers  away  the  soul  in  the  voice  of  his  soft  familiars, 
Indolence  and  Pleasure. 

Of  all  my  numerous  novels,  Pelham  and  Godolphin  are  the  only  ones 
which  take  their  absolute  groundwork  in  what  is  called  "The  Fashionable 
World."  I  have  sought  in  each  to  make  the  general  composition  in  some 
harmony  with  the  principal  figure  in  the  foreground.  Pelham  is  represented 
as  almost  wholly  unsusceptible  to  the  more  poetical  influences.  He  has  the 
physical  compound,  which,  versatile  and  joyous,  amalgamates  easily  with 
the  world — he  views  life  with  the  lenient  philosophy  that  Horace  commends 
in  Aristippus  ;  he  laughs  at  the  follies  he  shares  ;  and  is  ever  ready  to  turn 
iato  uses  ultimately  (if  indirectly)  serious,  the  frivolities  that  only  serve  to 


VI  PREFACE     TO     GODOLPHIN. 

sharpen  his  wit,  and  augment  that  peculiar  expression  which  we  term 
"knowledge  of  the  world."  In  a  word,  dispel  all  his  fopperies,  real  or  as- 
sumed, he  is  btill  the  active  man  of  crowds  and  cities,  determined  to  succeed, 
and  gifted  with  the  ordinary  qualities  of  success.  Godolphin,  on  the  con- 
trary, is  the  man  of  poetical  temperament,  out  of  his  place  alike  among  the 
trifling  idlers  and  the  bustling  actors  of  the  world — wanting  the  stimulus  of 
necessity — or  the  higher  motive  which  springs  from  benevolence,  to  give 
energy  to  his  powers,  or  definite  purpose  to  his  fluctuating  desires  ;  not 
strong  enough  to  break  the  bonds  that  confine  his  genius — not  supple 
enough  to  accommodate  its  movements  to  their  purpose.  He  is  the  moral 
antipodes  to  Pelham.  In  evading  the  struggles  of  the  world,  he  grows  in- 
different to  its  duties — he  strives  with  no  obstacles — he  can  triumph  in  no 
career.  Represented  as  possessing  mental  qualities  of  a  higher  and  a  richer 
nature  than  those  to  which  Pelham  can  pretend,  he  is  also  represented  as 
very  inferior  to  him  in  constitution  of  character,  and  he  is  certainly  a  more 
ordinary  type  of  the  intellectual  trifler. 

The  characters  grouped  around  Godolphin  are  those  with  which  such  a 
man  usually  associates  his  life.  They  are  designed  to  have  a  certain  grace — • 
a  certain  harmony  with  one  form  or  the  other  of  his  twofold  temperament : — 
viz.,  either  its  conventional  elegance  of  taste,  or  its  constitutional  poetry  of 
idea.  But  all  alike  are  brought  under  varying  operations  of  similar  influen- 
ces ;  or  whether  in  Saville,  Cons'ance,  Fanny,  or  Lucilla — the  picture  pre- 
sented is  still  the  picture  of  gifts  misapplied — of  life  misunderstood.  The 
Preacher  who  exclaimed,  "  Vanity  of  vanities  !  all  is  vanity,"  perhaps  solved 
his  own  mournful  saying,  when  he  added  else  where,  "  This  only  have  I  found, 
that  God  made  men  upright — but  they  have  sought  out  many  inventions." 

This  work  was  first  published  anonymously,  and  for  that  reason  perhaps 
it  has  been  slow  in  attaining  to  its  rightful  station  amongst  its  brethren — 
whose  parentage  at  fust  was  openly  acknowledged.  If  compared  with  Pel- 
ham,  it  might  lo^e  at  the  first  glance,  but  would  perhaps  gain  on  any  atten- 
tive re-perusa!. 

For  although  it  must  follow  from  the  inherent  difference  in  the  design  of 
the  two  works  thus  referred  to,  that  in  Godolphin  there  can  be  little  of  the 
satire  or  vivacity  which  have  given  popularity  to  its  predecessor,  yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  Godolphin  there  ought  to  be  a  more  faithful  illustration  of  the 
even  polish  which  belongs  to  luxurious  life, — of  the  satiety  which  pleasure 
inflicts  upon  such  of  its  votaries  as  are  worthy  of  a  higher  service.  The  sub- 
ject selected  cannot  admit  the  same  facility  for  observation  of  things  that  lie 
on  the  surface — but  it  may  well  lend  itself  to  subtler  investigation  of  charac- 
ter— allow  more  attempt  at  pathos,  and  more  appeal  to  reflection. 

Regarded  as  a  story,  the  defects  of  Godolphin  most  apparent  to  myself 
are  in  the  manner  in  which  Lucilla  is  re-introduced  in  the  later  chapters,  and 
in  the  final  catastrophe  of  the  hero.  There  is  an  exaggerated  romance  in 
the  one,  and  the  admission  of  accident  as  a  crowning  agency  in  the  other, 
which  my  maturer  judgment  would  certainly  condemn,  and  which  at  all 
events  appear  to  me  out  of  keeping  with  the  natural  events,  and  the  more 
patient  investigation  of  moral  causes  and  their  consequences,  from  which  the 
previous  interest  of  the  tale  is  sought  to  be  attained.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
I  may  presume  to  conjecture  the  most  probable  claim  to  favor,  which  the 
work,  regarded  as  a  whole,  may  possess — it  may  possibly  be  found  in  a  tol- 
erabiy  accurate  description  of  certain  phases  of  modern  civilization,  and  in 
the  suggestion  of  some  truths  that  may  be  worth  considering  in  our  exami- 
nation of  social  influences  or  individual  conduct. 


CONTENTS. 


I.     The  death-bed  of  John  Vernon — His  dying  words — Description  of 

his  daughter,  the  heroine — The  oath,         -----      15 

II.  Remark  on  the  tenure  of  life — The  coffins  of  great  men  seldom  neg- 
lected— Constance  takes  refuge  with  Lady  Erpingham — The 
heroine's  accomplishments  and  character — The  manoeuvring 
temperament,  ----------17 

III.  The  hero  introduced  to  our  reader's  notice — Dialogue  between  him- 

self and  his  father — Percy  Godolphin's  character  as  a  boy — 
The  catastrophe  of  his  school  life,     -        -        -        -        -    "    -      20 

IV.  Percy's  first  adventure  as  a  free  agent,      ------      23 

V.  The  mummers— Godolphm  in  love — The  effect  of  Fanny  Millinger's 
acting  upon  him  —  The  two  offers — Godolphin  quits  the 
players,  ------  _  -  .  _  -  24 

VI.     Percy  Godolphin  the  guest  of  Saville  —He  enters  the  Life-Guards, 

and  becomes  the  fashion,   --------28 

VII.     Saville  excused  for  having  human  affections — Godolphin  sees  one 

whom  he  never  sees  again — The  new  actress,    -        -        -  31 

VIII.     Godolphin's  passion  for  the  stage — The  difference  is  engendered  in 

his  habits  of  life,        ---------33 

IX.     The  legacy — A  new  deformity  in  Saville — The  nature  of  worldly 

liaisons — Godolphin  leaves  England,         -----      35 

X.     The  education  of  Constance's  mind,          ------      3.3 

XI.     Conversation  between  Lady  Erpingham  and  Constance — Further 

particulars  of  Godolphin's  family,  etc.,      -----      39 

XII.     Description  of  Godolphin's  house— The  first  interview — Its  effect 

on  Constance,     ----------42 

XIII.  A  ball  announced — Godolphin's  visit  to   Wendover  Castle — His 

manners  and  conversation,         -------      46 

XIV.  Conversation  between  Godolphin  and  Constance — The  country  life 

and  the  town  life,       ---------48 

XV.  The  feelings  of  Constance  and  Godolphin  towards  each  other — 
The  distinction  in  their  characters — Remarks  on  the  effects 
produced  by  the  world  upon  Godolphin— The  ride — Rural  de- 
scriptions— Omens — The  first  indistinct  confession,  50 

vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER 

XVI. 


XVII. 


XVIII. 
XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 
XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 
XXXIII. 


Godolphin's  return  home  —  His  soliloquy  —  Lord  Erpingham's 
arrival  at  Wendover  Castle—  The  Earl  described—  His  ac- 
count of  Godolphin's  life  at  Rome,  -----  55 

Constance  at  her  toilet  —  Her  feelings  —  Her  character  of  beauty 
described  —  The  ball  —  The  Duchess  of  Winstoun  and  her 
daughter  —  An  induction  from  the  nature  of  female  rival- 
ries —  Jealousy  in  a  lover  —  Impertinence  retorted  —  Listeners 
never  hear  good  of  themselves  —  Remarks  on  the  amuse- 
ments of  a  public  assembly  —  The  supper  —  The  falseness 
of  seeming  gaiety  —  Various  reflections,  new  and  true  — 
What  passes  between  Godolphin  and  Constance,  60 

Thejinten'iew  —  The  crisis  of  a  life,     ------      73 

A  rake  and  exquisite  of  the  best  (worst)  school  —  A  conversation 
on  a  thousand  matters  —  The  declension  of  the  sui  profusus 
into  the  alieni  appetens,  .......  jg 

Fanny  Millinger  once  more  —  Love  —  Woman  —  Books  —  A  hun- 
dred topics  touched  on  the  surface  —  Godolphin's  state  of 
mind  more  minutely  examined  —  The  dinner  at  Saville's,  -  86 

An  event  of  great  importance  to  the  principal  actors  in  this 

history  —  Godolphin  a  second  time  leaves  England,      -        -      93 

The  bride  alone  —  A  dialogue  political  and  matrimonial  —  Con- 
stance's genius  for  diplomacy  —  The  character  of  her  assem- 
blies —  Her  conquest  over  Lady  Delville,  95 

An  insight  into  the  real  grand  monde;  —  being  a  search  behind 

the  rose-colored  curtains,      -------      gg 

The  married  state  of  Constance,          ------    IQI 

The  pleasure  of  retaliating  humiliation  —  Constance's  defence 
of  fashion  —  Remarks  on  fashion  —  Godolphin's  where- 
about —  Fanny  Millinger's  character  of  herself  —  Want  of 
courage  in  moralists,  --------  104 

The  visionary    and    his   daughter  —  An  Englishman,   such  as 

foreigners  imagine  the  English,    ------    107 

A  conversation  little  appertaining  to  the  nineteenth  century  — 

Researches  into  human  fate  —  The  prediction,      -        -        -    1  13 

The  youth  of  Lucilla  Volktman  —  A  mysterious  conversation-r- 

The  return  of  one  unlocked  for,  ------    120 

The  effect  of  years  and  experience  —  The  Italian  character,         -    127 
Magnetism  —  Sympathy  —  The  return  of  elements  to  elements,    -    129 

A  Scene-  —  Lucilla's  strange  conduct  —  Godolphin  passes  through 

a  severe  ordeal  —  Egeria's  Grotto,  and  what  there  happens,     132 

The  weakness  of  all  virtue  springing  only  from  the  feelings,      -    142 

Return  to  Lady  Erpingham  —  Lady  Erpingham  falls  ill  —  Lord 
Erpingham  resolves  to  go  abroad  —  Plutarch  upon  musical 
instruments  —  Party  at  Erpingham  House  —  Saville  on 
society  and  the  taste  for  the  little  —  David  Mandeville  — 
Women,  their  influence  and  education  —  The  necessity  of 
an  object  —  Religion,  -.------  148 


CONTENT?. 


IX 


CHAPTER 

XXXIV. 


XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 
XXXVIII. 


XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLI. 

XLII. 

XLIII. 

XLIV. 

XLV. 

XLVI. 
XLVII. 
XLVIII. 


Ambition  vindicated  —  The  home  of  Godolphin  and  Lucilla  — 
Lucilla's  mind  —  The  effect  of  happy  love  on  female  talent  — 
The  eve  of  farewell  —  Lucilla  alone  —  Test  of  a  woman's 
affection,  ----------  i^ 

Godolphin  at  Rome  —  The  cure  for  a  morbid  idealism  —  His 
embarrassment  in  regard  to  Lucilla  —  The  rencontre  with 
an  old  friend  —  The  Colosseum  —  A  surprise,  ...  163 

Dialogue  between  Godolphin  and  Saville  —  Certain  events  ex- 
plained —  Saville's  apology  for  a  bad  heart  —  Godolphin's 
confused  sentiments  for  Lady  Erpingham,  - 

An  evening  with  Constance,        -        -        -        -        -        -        - 


— Fanny  Millinger — Her  house  and  supper, 


LI. 

LII. 
UH, 


168 
172 


Constance's  undiminished  love  for  Godolphin  —  Her  remorse 
and  her  hope  —  The  Capitol  —  The  different  thoughts  of 
Godolphin  and  Constance  at  the  view  —  The  tender  expres- 
sions of  Constance,  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -174 

Lucilla's  Letter  —  The  effect  it  produces  on  Godolphin,      -        -  177 

Tivoli  —  The  Siren's  Cave  —  The  confession,        -        ...  182 

Lucilla  —  The  solitude  —  The  spell  —  The  dream  and  the  resolve,  185 

Joy  and  despair,  ----------  189 

Love  strong  as  death,  and  not  less  bitter,   -----  194 

Godolphin,  -----------  197 

The  declaration  —  The   approaching  nuptials  —  Is   the  idealist 

contented  ?----------  198 

The  bridals  —  The  accident  —  The  first  lawful  possession  of  love,  201 


News  of  Lucilla,  ----------    203 

In  which  two  persons,  permanently  united,  discover  that  no  tie 

can  produce  union  of  minds,        ------    204 

XLIX.     The  return  to  London— The  eternal  nature  of  disappointment 


-     207 


Godolphin's  soliloquy — He  becomes  a  man  of  pleasure  and  a 
patron  of  the  arts — A  new  character  shadowed  forth  ;  for 
as  we  advance,  whether  in  life  or  its  representation,  char- 
acters are  more  faint  and  dimly  drawn  than  in  the  earlier 
part  of  our  career,  --------  2it 

Godolphin's  course  of  life — Influence  of  opinion  and  of  ridicule 
on  the  minds  of  privileged  orders  —  Lady  Erpingham 's 
friendship  with  George  the  Fourth — His  manner  of  living,  214 

Radclyffe  and  Godolphin  converse — The  varieties  of  ambition,     217 

Fanny  behind  the  scenes — Reminiscences  of  youth — The  uni- 
versality of  trick — The  supper  at  Fanny  Millinger's — Talk 
on  a  thousand  matters,  equally  light  and  true — Fanny's 
song,  «..•»•«<.•,,.  210 


CONTENTS 


CHAPITER 

LIV. 


LV. 

LVI. 

LVII. 
LVIII. 

LIX. 

LX. 
LXI. 


LXIII. 
LXIV. 

LXV. 

LXVI. 

LXVII. 
LXVIII. 


The  career  of  Constance — Real  state  of  her  feelings  towards 
Godolphin — Rapid  succession  of  political  events — Canning's 
administration — Catholic  Question — Lord  Grey's  speech — 
Canning's  death,  ---------  324 

The  death  of  George  IV. — The  political  situation  of  parties,  and 

of  Lady  Erpingham,    --------    227 

The  roue  has  become  a  valetudinarian — News — A  Fortune- 
teller, ---------- 


Superstition — Its  wonderful  effects,     ------ 

The  empire  of  time  and  of  love — The  proud  Constance  grown 


weak  and  humble — An  ordeal, 


229 
232 


-     234 


Constance  makes  a  discovery  that  touches  and  enlightens  her  as 
to  Godolphin's  nature — An  event,  although  in  private  life, 
not  without  its  interest,  -------  237 

The  Reform  Bill — A  very  short  chapter,     -----    240 

The  soliloquy  of  the  soothsayer — An  episodical  mystery,  intro- 
duced as  a  type  of  the  many  things  in  life  that  are  never 
accounted  for — Gratuitous  deviations  from  our  common 
career,  -----------  241 

LXII.     In  which  the  common  life  glides  into  the  strange — Equally  true, 

but  the  truth  not  equally  acknowledged,       ...        -    245 

A  meeting  between  Constance  and  the  prophetess,     -        -        -    247 

Lucilla's  flight  —  The  perplexity  of  Lady  Erpingham  —  A 
change  comes  over  Godolphin's  mind — His  conversation 
with  Radclyffe — General  Election — Godolphin  becomes  a 
senator,  -------- 


-    254 

New  views  of  a  privileged  order — The  death-bed  of  Augustus 

Saville,  -----------    261 

The  journey  and  the  surprise — A  walk  in  the  summer  night — 
The  stars  and  the  association  that  memory  makes  with 
nature,  -----------  264 

The  full  renewal  of  love — Happiness  produces  fear,  "and  in 

to-day  already  walks  to-morrow,"        -  269 

The  last  conversation  between  Godolphin  aud  Constance — His 
thoughts  and  solitary  walk  amidst  the  scenes  of  his  youth- 
The  letter— The  departure,  ------ 


LXIX.     A  dread  meeting — The  storm — The  catastrophe, 


271 
275 


GODOLPHIN. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE   DEATH-BED   OF  JOHN  VERNON. — HIS  DYING  WORDS. — DESCRIP- 
TION OF  HIS  DAUGHTER,  THE  HEROINE. — THE  OATH. 

"Is  the  night  calm,  Constance?" 

"Beautiful !  the  moon  is  up." 

"Open  the  shutters  wider, — there.  It  is  a  beautiful  night. 
How  beautiful !  Come  hither,  my  child." 

The  rich  moonlight  that  now  shone  through  the  window 
streamed  on  little  that  it  could  invest  with  poetical  attraction. 
The  room  was  small,  though  not  squalid  in  its  character  and 
appliances.  The  bed-curtains,  of  a  dull  chintz,  were  drawn 
back,  and  showed  the  form  of  a  man,  past  middle  age,  propped 
by  pillows,  and  bearing  on  his  countenance  the  marks  of 
approaching  death.  But  what  a  countenance  it  still  was  !  The 
broad,  pale,  lofty  brow ;  the  fine,  straight,  Grecian  nose;  the 
short,  curved  lip ;  the  full,  dimpled  chin ;  the  stamp  of  genius  in 
every  line  and  lineament; — these  still  defied  disease,  or  rather 
borrowed  from  its  very  ghastliness  a  more  impressive  majesty. 
Beside  the  bed  was  a  table  spread  with  books  of  a  motley  char- 
acter. Here  an  abstruse  system  of  Calculations  on  Finance; 
there  a  volume  of  wild  Bacchanalian  Songs ;  here  the  lofty 
aspirations  of  Plato's  "  Phsedon  "  ;  and  there  the  last  speech  of 
some  County  Paris  on  a  Malt  Tax :  old  newspapers  and  dusty 
pamphlets  completed  the  intellectual  litter ;  and  above  them  rose, 
mournfully  enough,  the  tall,  spectral  form  of  a  half-emptied 
phial,  and  a  chamber-candlestick,  crested  by  its  extinguisher. 

A  light  step  approached  the  bedside,  and  opposite  the  dying 
man  now  stood  a  girl,  who  might  have  seen  her  thirteenth  year. 
But  her  features — of  an  exceeding,  and  what  maybe  termed  a 
regal  beauty — were  as  fully  developed  as  those  of  one  who  had 
told  twice  her  years ;  and  not  a  trace  of  the  bloom  or  the  soft- 
aess  of  girlhood  could  be  marked  on  her  countenance,  Her 


Id  GODOLPHIN. 

complexion  was  pale  as  the  whitest  marble,  but  clear,  and  lust- 
rous ;  and  her  raven  hair,  parted  over  her  brow  in  a  fashion  then 
uncommon,  increased  the  statue-like  and  classic  effect  of  her 
noble  features.  The  expression  of  her  countenance  seemed  cold, 
sedate,  and  somewhat  stern;  but  it  might,  in  some  measure, 
have  belied  her  heart,  for,  when  turned  to  the  moonlight,  you 
might  see  that  her  eyes  were  filled  with  tears,  though  she  did  not 
weep ;  and  you  might  tell  by  the  quivering  of  her  lip,  that  a 
little  hesitation  in  replying  to  any  remark  from  the  sufferer  arose 
from  her  difficulty  in  commanding  her  emotions. 

"  Constance,"  said  the  invalid,  after  a  pause,  in  which  he 
seemed  to  have  been  gazing  with  a  quiet  heart  on  the  soft  skies, 
that,  blue  and  eloquent  with  stars,  he  beheld  through  the  unclosed 
windows:  "Constance,  the  hour  is  coming;  I  feel  it  by  signs 
which  I  cannot  mistake.  I  shall  die  this  night." 

"  Oh,  God  !  My  father ! — my  dear,  dear  father !  "  broke  from 
Constance's  lips;  "do  not  speak  thus — do  not — I  will  go  to 
Doctor " 

"No,  child,  no;  I  loathe — I  detest  the  thought  of  help! 
They  denied  it  me  while  it  was  yet  time.  They  left  me  to  starve, 
or  to  rot  in  gaol,  or  to  hang  myself !  They  left  me  like  a  dog, 
and  like  a  dog  1  will  die  !  I  would  not  have  one  iota  taken  from 
the  justice — the  deadly  and  dooming  weight  of  my  dying  curse." 
Here  violent  spasms  broke  on  the  speech  of  the  sufferer;  and 
when,  by  medicine  and  his  daughter's  attentions,  he  had 
recovered,  he  said,  in  a  lower  and  calmer  key:  "Is  all  quiet 
below,  Constance?  Are  all  in  bed?  The  landlady — the  ser- 
vants— our  fellow-lodgers?" 

"All,  my  father." 

"Ay;  then  1  shall  die  happy.  Thank  Heaven,  you  are  my 
only  nurse  and  attendant.  I  remember  the  day  when  I  was  ill 
after  one  of  their  rude  debauches.  Ill  ! — a  sick  headache — a  fit 
of  the  spleen — a  spoiled  lapdog's  illness  !  Well :  they  wanted 
me  that  night  to  support  one  of  their  paltry  measures — their  par- 
liamentary measures.  And  I  had  a  prince  feeling  my  pulse,  and 
a  duke  mixing  my  draught,  and  a  dozen  earls  sending  their  doc- 
tors to  me.  I  was  of  use  to  them  then  !  Poor  me  !  Read  me 
that  note.  Constance — Flamborough's  note.  Do  you  hesitate? 
Read  it,  I  say  !  " 

Constance  trembled-  and  complied. 

' '  Mv  DEAR  VERNON  : 

"  I  am  really  au  dtsespoir  to  hear  of  your  melancholy  state; 
so  sorry  J  cannot  assist  you  but  you  know  my  embarrassed 


GODOLPHIN.  15 

stances.  By  the  by,  I  saw  his  Royal  Highness  yesterday. 
'  Poor  Vernon  ! '  said  he ;  '  would  a  hundred  pounds  do  him  any 
good?'  So  we  don't  forget  you,  mon  cher.  Ah!  how  we 
missed  you  at  the  Beefsteak !  Never  shall  we  know  again  so 
glorious  a  ban  vivant.  You  would  laugh  to  hear  L attempt- 
ing to  echo  your  old  jokes.  But  time  presses  :  I  must  be  off  to 
the  House.  You  know  what  a  motion  it  is  !  Would  to  Heaven 

you  were  to  bring  it  on  instead  of  that  ass  T .  Adieu  !  I  wish 

I  could  come  and  see  you ;  but  it  would  break  my  heart.  Can  I 
send  you  any  books  from  Hookham's? 

"Yours  ever, 

' '  FLAMBOROUGH." 

"This  is  the  man  whom  I  made  Secretary  of  State,"  said 
Vernon.  "  Very  well ! — oh,  it's  very  well — very  well  indeed! 
Let  me  kiss  thee,  my  girl.  Poor  Constance !  You  will  have 
good  friends  when  I  am  dead  !  They  will  be  proud  enough  to  be 
kind  to  Vernon's  daughter,  when  Death  has  shown  them  that 
Vernon  is  a  loss.  You  are  very  handsome.  Your  poor  mother's 
eyes  and  hair;  my  father's  splendid  brow  and  lip;  and  your 
figure,  even  now  so  stately  !  They  will  court  you  :  you  will  have 
lords  and  great  men  enough  at  your  feet ;  but  you  will  never  for- 
get this  night,  nor  the  agony  of  your  father's  death-bed  face,  and 
the  brand  they  have  burned  in  his  heart.  And  now,  Constance, 
give  me  the  Bible  in  which  you  read  to  me  this  morning — that 
will  do — stand  away  from  the  light  and  fix  your  eyes  on  mine, 
and  listen  as  if  your  soul  were  in  your  ears. 

"When  I  was  a  young  man,  toiling  my  way  to  fortune  through 
the  labors  of  the  Bar — prudent,  cautious,  indefatigable,  confident 
of  success — certain  lords,  who  heard  I  possessed  genius,  and 
thought  I  might  become  their  tool,  came  to  me,  and  besought  me 
to  enter  Parliament.  I  told  them  I  was  poor,  was  lately  married, 
that  my  public  ambition  must  not  be  encouraged  at  the  expense 
of  my  private  fortunes.  They  answered,  that  they  pledged  them- 
selves those  fortunes  should  be  their  care.  I  yielded ;  I  deserted 
my  profession ;  I  obeyed  their  wishes ;  I  became  famous — and  a 
ruined  man  !  They  could  not  dine  without  me  ;  they  could  not 
sup  without  me;  they  could  not  get  drunk  without  me;  no  pleas- 
ure was  sweet  but  in  my  company.  What  mattered  it  that,  while 
I  ministered  to  their  amusement,  I  was  necessarily  heaping  debt 
upon  debt ;  accumulating  miseries  for  future  years ;  laying  up 
bankruptcy,  and  care,  and  shame,  and  a  broken  heart,  and  an 
early  death?  But  listen,  Constance!  Are  you  listening?  Atten- 
tively ?  Well !  note  now,  I  am  a  just  man.  I  do  not  blame  my 

~ 


1 6  GODOLPHIN. 

noble  friends,  my  gentle  patrons,  for  this.  No :  if  I  were  forget- 
ful of  my  interests,  if  I  preferred  their  pleasure  to  my  happiness 
and  honor,  that  was  my  crime,  and  I  deserve  the  punishment ! 
But,  look  you, — Time  went  by,  and  my -constitution  was  broken; 
debts  came  upon  me  ;  I  could  not  pay  ;  men  mistrusted  my  word ; 
my  name  in  the  country  fell !  With  my  health,  my  genius  desert- 
ed me ;  I  was  no  longer  useful  to  my  party ;  I  lost  my  seat  in  Par- 
liament ;  and  when  I  was  on  a  sick  bed — you  remember  it,  Con- 
stance— the  bailiffs  came,  and  tore  me  away  for  a  paltry  debt,  the 
value  of  one  of  those  suppers  the  Prince  used  to  beg  me  to  give 
him.  From  that  time  my  familiars  forsook  me  !  Not  a  visit,  not 
a  kind  act,  not  a  service  for  him  whose  day  of  work  was  over  ! 
*  Poor  Vernon's  character  was  gone !  Shockingly  involved — could 
not  perform  his  promises  to  his  creditors — always  so  extravagant 
— quite  unprincipled — must  give  him  up  ! ' 

"  In  those  sentences  lies  the  secret  of  their  conduct.  They  did 
not  remember  that  for  them,  by  them,  the  character  was  gone, 
the  promises  broken,  the  ruin  incurred  !  They  thought  not  how 
I  had  served  them  ;  how  my  best  years  had  been  devoted  to  ad- 
vance them ;  to  ennoble  their  cause  in  the  lying  page  of  History  ! 
All  this  was  not  thought  of:  my  life  was  reduced  to  two  epochs : 
that  of  use  to  them — that  not.  During  the  first,  I  was  honored  ; 
during  the  last,  I  was  left  to  starve — to  rot  !  Who  freed  me  from 
prison  ?  who  protects  me  now  ?  One  of  my  '  party ' — my  '  noble 
friends' — my  'honorable,  right  honorable  friends?"  No!  A 
tradesman  whom  I  once  served  in  my  holyday,  and  who  alone, 
of  all  the  world,  forgets  me  not  in  my  penance.  You  see  grati- 
tude, friendship,  spring  up  only  in  middle  life ;  they  grow  not  in 
high  stations ! 

"  And  now,  come  nearer,  for  my  voice  falters,  and  I  would 
have  these  words  distinctly  heard.  Child,  girl  as  you  are — you  I 
consider  pledged  to  record,  to  fulfil  my  desire — my  curse  !  Lay 
your  hand  on  mine:  swear  that  through  life  to  death, — swear! 
You  speak  not !  repeat  my  words  after  me  " — Constance  obeyed  : 
— "through  life  to  death;  through  good,  through  ill,  through 
weakness,  through  power,  you  will  devote  yourself  to  humble,  to 
abase  that  party  from  whom  your  father  received  ingratitude,  mor- 
tification, and  death  !  Swear  that  you  will  not  marry  a  poor  and 
powerless  man,  who  cannot  minister  to  the  ends  of  that  solemn 
retribution  I  invoke !  Swear  that  you  will  seek  to  marry  amongst 
the  great;  not  through  love,  not  through  ambition,  but  through 
hate,  and  for  revenge !  You  will  seek  to  rise  that  you  may  hum- 
ble those  who  have  betrayed  me  !  In  the  social  walks  of  life  you 
will  delight  to  gall  their  vanities ;  in  state-intrigues,  you  will  em- 


GODOLPHIN.  1 7 

brace  every  measure  that  can  bring  them  to  their  eternal  down- 
fall. For  this  great  end  you  will  pursue  all  means — What !  you 
hesitate?  Repeat,  repeat,  repeat!  You  will  lie,  cringe,  fawn,  and 
think  vice  not  vice,  if  it  bring  you  one  jot  nearer  to  Revenge ! 
With  this  curse  on  my  foes  I  entwine  my  blessing,  dear,  dear 
Constance  on  you, — you,  who  have  nursed,  watched,  all  but  saved 
me  !  God,  God  bless  you,  my  child  !  "  And  Vernon  burst  into 
tears. 

It  was  two  hours  after  this  singular  scene,  and  exactly  in  the 
third  hour  of  morning,  that  Vernon  woke  from  a  short  and  trou- 
bled sleep.  The  gray  dawn  (for  the  time  was  the  height  of  summer) 
already  began  to  labor  through  the  shades  and  against  the  stars  of 
night.  A  raw  and  comfortless  chill  crept  over  the  earth,  and 
saddened  the  air  in  the  death-chamber.  Constance  sat  by  her 
father's  bed,  her  eyes  fixed  upon  him,  and  her  cheek  more  wan 
than  ever  by  the  pale  light  of  that  crude  and  cheerless  dawn. 
When  Vernon  woke,  his  eyes  glazed  with  death,  rolled  faintly 
towards  her,  fixing  and  dimming  in  their  sockets  as  they  gazed ; 
his  throat  rattled.  But  for  one  moment  his  voice  found  vent ;  a 
ray  shot  across  his  countenance  as  he  uttered  his  last  words — 
words  that  sank  at  once  and  eternally  to  the  core  of  his  daughter's 
heart — words  that  ruled  her  life,  and  sealed  her  destiny :  "Con- 
stance, remember — the  Oath — Revenge !  " 

CHAPTER  II. 

REMARK   ON    THE   TENURE    OF    LIFE. — THE   COFFINS  OF  GREAT  MEN 

SELDOM    NEGLECTED. CONSTANCE    TAKES    REFUGE    WITH    LADY 

ERPINGHAM.— THE  HEROINE'S  ACCOMPLISHMENTS  AND  CHARACTER. 
THE  MANOEUVRING  TEMPERAMENT. 

WHAT  a  strange  life  this  is  !  What  puppets  we  are  I  How  ter- 
rible an  enigma  is  Fate  !  I  never  set  my  foot  without  my  door, 
but  what  the  fearful  darkness  that  broods  over  the  next  moment 
rushes  upon  me.  How  awful  an  event  may  hang  over  our  hearts ! 
The  sword  is  always  above  us,  seen  or  invisible. 

And  with  this  life — this  scene  of  darkness  and  dread — some 
men  would  have  us  so  contented  as  to  desire,  to  ask  for  no  other  ! 

Constance  was  now  without  a  near  relation  in  the  world.  But 
her  father  predicted  rightly  :  vanity  supplied  the  place  of  affec- 
tion. Vernon,  who  for  eighteen  months  preceeding  his  death  had 
struggled  with  the  sharpest  afflictions  of  want — Vernon,  deserted 
in  life  by  all,  was  interred  with  the  insulting  ceremonials  of  pomp 

2 


1 8  GODOLPHIN. 

and  state.  Six  nobles  bore  his  pall :  long  trains  of  carriages  at- 
tended his  funeral :  the  journals  were  filled  with  outlines  of  his 
biography  and  lamentations  at  his  decease.  They  buried  him  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  and  they  made  subscriptions  for  a  monument 
in  the  very  best  sort  of  marble.  Lady  Erpingham,  a  distant  con- 
nection of  the  deceased,  invited  Constance  to  live  with  her ;  and 
Constance  of  course  consented,  for  she  had  no  alternative. 

On  the  day  that  she  arrived  at  Lady  Erpingham's  house,  in 
Hill  Street,  there  were  several  persons  present  in  the  drawing- 
room. 

"I  fear,  poor  girl,"  said  Lady  Erpingham,  for  they  were  talk- 
ing of  Constance's  expected  arrival;  "I  fear  that  she  will  be 
quite  abashed  by  seeing  so  many  of  us,  and  under  such  unhappy 
circumstances." 

"  How  old  is  she?  "  asked  a  beauty. 

"About  thirteen,  I  believe." 

"Handsome?" 

"  I  have  not  seen  her  since  she  was  seven  years  old.  She  prom- 
ised then  to  be  very  beautiful ;  but  she  was  a  remarkably  shy, 
silent  child." 

"  Miss  Vernon,"  said  the  groom  of  the  chambers,  throwing 
open  the  door. 

With  the  slow  step  and  self-possessed  air  of  womanhood,  but 
with  a  far  haughtier  and  far  colder  mien  than  women  commonly 
assume,  Constance  Vernon  walked  through  the  long  apartment, 
and  greeted  her  future  guardian.  Though  every  eye  was  on  her, 
she  did  not  blush ;  though  the  Queens  of  the  London  World  were 
round  her,  her  gait  and  air  were  more  royal  than  all.  Every  one 
present  experienced  a  revulsion  of  feeling.  They  were  prepared 
for  pity ;  this  was  no  case  in  which  pity  could  be  given.  Even  the 
words  of  protection  died  on  Lady  Erpingham's  lip,  and  she  it 
was  who  felt  bashful  and  disconcerted. 

I  intend  to  pass  rapidly  over  the  years  that  elapsed  till  Con- 
stance became  a  woman.  Let  us  glance  at  her  education.  Ver- 
non had  not  only  had  her  instructed  in  the  French  and  Italian ; 
but,  a  deep  and  impassioned  scholar  himself,  he  had  taught  her 
the  elements  of  the  two  great  languages  of  the  ancient  world. 
The  treasures  of  those  languages  she  afterwards  conquered  of  her 
own  accord. 

Lady  Erpingham  had  one  daughter,  who  married  when  Con- 
stance had  reached  the  age  of  sixteen.  The  advantages  Lady 
Eleanor  Erpingham  possessed  in  her  masters  and  her  governess, 
Constance  shared.  Miss  Vernon  drew  well,  and  sang  divinely  ; 
but  she  made  no  very  great  proficiency  in  the  science  of  music. 


GODOLPHIN.  19 

To  say  truth,  her  mind  was  somewhat  too  stern,  and  somewhat 
too  intent  on  other  subjects,  to  surrender  to  that  most  jealous  of 
accomplishments  the  exclusive  devotion  it  requires. 

But  of  all  her  attractions,  and  of  all  the  evidences  of  her  cul- 
tivated mind,  none  equalled  the  extraordinary  grace  of  her  con- 
versation. Wholly  disregarding  the  conventional  leading-strings 
in  which  the  minds  of  young  ladies  are  accustomed  to  be  held — 
leading-strings  disguised  by  the  name  of  "proper  diffidence" 
and  "  becoming  modesty," — she  never  scrupled  to  share,  nay,  to 
lead,  discussions  even  of  a  grave  and  solid  nature.  Still  less  did 
she  scruple  to  adorn  the  common  trifles  that  make  the  sum  of 
conversation  with  the  fascination  of  a  wit,  which,  playful  yet 
deep,  rivalled  even  the  paternal  source  from  which  it  was  inher- 
ited. 

It  seems  sometimes  odd  enough  to  me,  that  while  young  ladies 
are  so  sedulously  taught  the  accomplishments  that  a  husband  dis- 
regards, they  are  never  taught  the  great  one  he  would  prize.  They 
are  taught  to  be  exhibitors ;  he  wants  a  companion.  He  wants 
neither  a  singing  animal,  nor  a  drawing  animal,  nor  a  dancing 
animal;  he  wants  a  talking  animal.  But  to  talk  they  are  never 
taught ;  all  they  know  of  conversation  is  slander,  and  that ' '  comes 
by  nature." 

But  Constance  did  talk  beautifully  :  not  like  a  pedant,  or  a  blue, 
or  a  Frenchwoman.  A  child  would  have  been  as  much  charmed 
with  her  as  a  scholar  ;  but  both  would  have  been  charmed.  Her 
father's  eloquence  had  descended  to  her;  but  in  him  eloquence 
commanded ;  in  her  it  won.  There  was  another  trait  she  pos- 
sessed in  common  with  her  father :  Vernon  (as  most  disappointed 
men  are  wont)  had  done  the  world  injustice  by  his  accusations.  It 
was  not  his  poverty  and  his  distresses  alone  which  had  induced 
his  party  to  look  coolly  on  his  declining  day.  They  were  not 
without  some  apparent  excuse  for  desertion — they  doubted  his  sin- 
cerity. It  is  true  that  it  was  without  actual  cause.  No  modern 
politician  had  ever  been  more  consistent.  He  had  refused  bribes, 
though  poor ;  and  place,  though  ambitious.  But  he  was  essen- 
tially— here  is  the  secret — essentially  an  intriguant.  Bred  in  the 
old  school  of  policy,  he  thought  that  manreuvring  was  wisdom,  and 
duplicity  the  art  of  governing.  Like  Lysander,*  he  loved  plot- 
ting, yet  neglected  self-interest.  There  was  not  a  man  less  open, 
or  more  honest.  This  character,  so  rare  in  all  countries,  is  espec- 
ially so  in  England.  Your  blunt  squires,  your  politicians  at 
Bellamy's,  do  not  comprehend  it.  They  saw  in  Vernon  the  arts 

*  Plutarch's  "  Life  of  Lysander." 


2O  GODOLPHIN. 

which  deceive  enemies,  and  they  dreaded  lest,  through  his 
friends,  they  themselves  should  be  deceived.  This  disposition,  so 
fatal  to  Vernon,  his  daughter  inherited.  With  a  dark,  bold,  and 
passionate  genius,  which  in  a  man  would  have  led  to  the  highest 
enterprises,  she  linked  the  feminine  love  of  secrecy  and  scheming. 
To  borrow  again  from  Plutarch  and  Lysander,  "  When  the  skin 
of  the  lion  fell  short,  she  was  quite  of  opinion  that  it  should  be 
eked  out  with  the  fox's." 

CHAPTER  HI. 

THE  HERO  INTRODUCED  TO  OUR  READER'S  NOTICE. — DIALOGUE 
BETWEEN  HIMSELF  AND  HIS  FATHER. — PERCY  GODOLPHIN'S  CHAR- 
ACTER AS  A  BOY. — THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  HIS  SCHOOL  LIFE. 

"  PERCY,  remember  that  it  is  to-morrow  you  will  return  to 
school,"  said  Mr.  Godolphin  to  his  only  son. 

Percy  pouted,  and  after  a  momentary  silence  replied,  "  No, 
father,  I  think  I  shall  go  to  Mr.  Saville's.  He  has  asked  me  to 
spend  a  month  with  him ;  and  he  says  rightly  that  I  shall  learn 
more  with  him  than  at  Dr.  Shallowell's,  where  I  am  already  head 
of  the  sixth  form." 

"Mr.  Saville  is  a  coxcomb,  and  you  are  another !  "  replied  the 
father,  who,  dressed  in  an  old  flannel  dressing-gown,  with  a  worn 
velvet  cap  on  his  head,  and  cowering  gloomily  over  a  wretched 
fire,  seemed  no  bad  personification  of  that  mixture  of  half-hypo- 
chondriac, half-miser,  which  he  was  in  reality.  "Don't  talk  to 
me  of  going  to  town,  sir,  or — " 

"  Father,"  interrupted  Percy,  in  a  cool  and  nonchalant  tone,  as 
he  folded  his  arms,  and  looked  straight  and  shrewdly  on  the  pater- 
nal face — "  father,  let  us  understand  each  other.  My  schooling, 
I  suppose,  is  rather  an  expensive  affair?  " 

"  You  may  well  say  that,  sir  !  Expensive !  It  is  frightful,  hor- 
rible, ruinous  !  Expensive  !  Twenty  pounds  a-year  board  and 
Latin  ;  five  guineas  washing ;  five  more  for  writing  and  arithme- 
tic. Sir,  if  I  were  not  resolved  that  you  should  not  want  educa- 
tion, though  you  may  want  fortune,  I  should — yes,  I  should 
— What  do  you  mean,  sir?  You  are  laughing!  Is  this  your 
respect,  your  gratitude,  to  your  father?" 

A  slight  shade  fell  over  the  bright  and  intelligent  countenance 
of  the  boy. 

"Don't  let  us  talk  of  gratitude,"  said  he,  sadly;  "Heaven 
knows  what  either  you  or  I  have  to  be  grateful  for  !  Fortune  has 
left  to  your  proud  name  but  these  bare  walls  and  a  handful  of 


GODOLPHIN.  21 

barren  acres ;  to  me  she  gave  a  father's  affection — not  such  as 
Nature  had  made  it,  but  cramped  and  soured  by  misfortunes." 

Here  Percy  paused,  and  his  father  seemed  also  struck  and 
affected.  "Let  us,"  renewed,  in  a  lighter  strain,  this  singular 
boy,  who  might  have  passed,  by  some  months,  his  sixteenth  year ; 
' '  Let  us  see  if  we  cannot  accommodate  matters  to  our  mutual  sat- 
isfaction. You  can  ill  afford  my  schooling,  and  I  am  resolved 
that  at  school  I  will  not  stay.  Saville  is  a  relation  of  ours ;  he 
has  taken  a  fancy  to  me ;  he  has  even  hinted  that  he  may  leave 
me  his  fortune ;  and  he  has  promised,  at  least,  to  afford  me  a 
home  and  his  tuition  as  long  as  I  like.  Give  me  free  passport 
hereafter  to  come  and  go  as  I  list,  and  I,  in  turn,  will  engage  never 
to  cost  you  another  shilling.  Come,  sir,  shall  it  be  a  compact?" 

"You  wound  me,  Percy,"  said  the  father,  with  a  mournful 
pride  in  his  tone;  "  I  have  not  deserved  this,  at  least  from  you. 
You  know  not,  boy — you  know  not  all  that  has  hardened  this 
heart ;  but  to  you  it  has  not  been  hard,  and  a  taunt  from  you — 
yes,  that  is  the  serpent's  tooth  !  " 

Percy  in  an  instant  was  at  his  father's  feet ;  he  seized  both  his 
hands,  and  burst  into  a  passionate  fit  of  tears.  "Forgive  me," 
he  said,  in  broken  words;  "  I — I  meant  not  to  taunt  you.  I  am 
but  a  giddy  boy !  Send  me  to  school !  Do  with  me  as  you 
will !  " 

"  Ay,"  said  the  old  man,  shaking  his  head  gently,  "  you  know 
not  what  pain  a  son's  bitter  word  can  send  to  a  parent's  heart. 
But  it  is  all  natural,  perfectly  natural !  You  would  reproach  me 
with  a  love  of  money,  it  is  the  sin  to  which  youth  is  the  least  leni- 
ent. But  what !  Can  I  look  round  the  world  and  not  see  its 
value,  its  necessity?  Year  after  year,  from  my  first  manhood,  I 
have  toiled  and  toiled  to  preserve  from  the  hammer  these  last  rem- 
nants of  my  ancestor's  domains.  Year  after  year  fortune  has 
slipped  from  my  grasp  ;  and,  after  all  my  efforts,  and  towards  the 
close  of  a  long  life,  I  stand  on  the  very  verge  of  penury.  But 
you  cannot  tell — no  man  whose  heart  is  not  seared  with  many  years 
can  tell  or  can  appreciate,  the  motives  that  have  formed  my  char- 
acter. "  You,  however,"  and  his  voice  softened  as  he  laid  his 
hand  on  his  son's  head  ;  "You,  however — the  gay,  the  bold,  the 
young — should  not  have  your  brow  crossed  and  your  eye  dimmed 
by  the  cares  that  surround  me.  Go  !  I  will  accompany  you  to 
town  ;  I  will  see  Saville  myself.  If  he  be  one  with  whom  my  son 
can,  at  so  tender  an  age,  be  safely  trusted,  you  shall  pay  him  the 
visit  you  wish." 

Percy  would  have  replied,  but  his  father  checked  him ;  and 


22  GODOLPHIN. 

before  the  end  of  the  evening,  the  father  had  resolved  to  forget  as 
much  as  he  pleased  of  the  conversation. 

The  elder  Godolphin  was  one  of  those  characters  on  whom  it 
is  vain  to  attempt  making  a  permanent  impression.  The  habits 
of  his  mind  were  durably  formed  :  like  waters,  they  yielded  to 
any  sudden  intrusion,  but  closed  instantly  again.  Early  in  life  he 
had  been  taught  that  he  ought  to  marry  an  heiress  for  the  benefit 
of  his  estate — his  ancestral  estate;  the  restoration  of  which  he 
had  been  bred  to  consider  the  grand  object  and  ambition  of  life. 
His  views  had  been  strangely  baffled ;  but  the  more  they  were 
thwarted  the  more  pertinaciously  he  clung  to  them.  Naturally 
kind,  generous,  and  social,  he  had  sunk,  at  length,  into  the 
anchorite  and  the  miser.  All  other  speculations  that  should 
retrieve  his  ancestral  honors  had  failed  :  but  there  is  one  specula- 
tion that  never  fails — the  speculation  of  saving  !  It  was  to  this 
that  he  now  indissolubly  attached  himself.  At  moments  he  was 
open  to  all  his  old  habits  ;  but  such  moments  were  rare  and  few. 
A  cold,  hard,  frosty  penuriousness  was  his  prevalent  characteristic. 
He  had  sent  his  son,  with  eighteenpence  in  his  pocket,  to  a  school 
of  twenty  pounds  a  year;  where,  naturally  enough,  he  learned 
nothing  but  mischief  and  cricket :  yet  he  conceived  that  his  son 
owed  him  eternal  obligations. 

Luckily  for  Percy,  he  was  an  especial  favorite  with  a  certain  not 
uncelebrated  character  of  the  name  of  Saville ;  and  Saville  claimed 
the  privilege  of  a  relation  to  supply  him  with  money  and  receive 
him  at  his  home.  Wild,  passionate,  fond  to  excess  of  pleasure, 
the  young  Godolphin  caught  eagerly  at  these  occasional  visits ; 
and  at  each  his  mind,  keen  and  penetrating  as  it  naturally  was, 
took  new  flights  and  revelled  in  new  views.  He  was  already  the 
leader  of  his  school,  the  torment  of  the  master,  and  the  lover  of 
the  master's  daughter.  He  was  sixteen  years  old,  but  a  character. 
A  secret  pride,  a  secret  bitterness,  and  an  open  wit  and  reckless- 
ness of  bearing,  rendered  him  to  all  seeming  a  boy  more  endowed 
with  energies  than  affections.  Yet  a  kind  word  from  a  friend's 
lips  was  never  without  its  effect  on  him,  and  he  might  have  been 
led  by  the  silk  while  he  would  have  snapped  the  chain.  But 
these  were  his  boyish  traits  of  4mind :  the  world  soon  altered 
them. 

The  subject  of  the  visit  to  Saville  was  not  again  touched  upon. 
A  little  reflection  showed  Mr.  Godolphin  how  nugatory  were  the 
promises  of  a  schoolboy  that  he  should  not  cost  his  father  another 
shilling;  and  he  knew  that  Saville's  house  was  not  exactly  the 
spot  in  which  economy  was  best  learned.  He  thought  it,  there- 
fore, more  prudent  that  his  son  should  return  to  school, 


GODOLPHIN.  23 

To  school  went  Percy  Godolphin  ;  and  about  three  weeks  after- 
wards, Percy  Godolphin  was  condemned  to  expulsion  for  return- 
ing, with  considerable  unction,  a  slap  in  the  face  that  he  had 
received  from  Dr.  Shallowell.  Instead  of  waiting  for  his  father's 
arrival,  Percy  made  up  a  small  bundle  of  clothes,  let  himself  drop, 
by  the  help  of  the  bed-curtains,  from  the  window  of  the  room  in 
which  he  was  confined,  and  towards  the  close  of  a  fine  summer's 
evening,  found  himself  on  the  highroad  between and  Lon- 
don, with  independence  at  his  heart  and  (Saville's  last  gift)  ten 
guineas  in  his  pocket. 

CHAPTER  IV. 
PERCY'S  FIRST  ADVENTURE  AS  A  FREE  AGENT. 

IT  was  a  fine,  picturesque  outline  of  road  on  which  the  young 
outcast  found  himself  journeying,  whither  he  neither  knew  nor 
cared.  His  heart  was  full  of  enterprise  and  the  unfleshed  valor  of 
inexperience.  He  had  proceeded  several  miles  and  the  dusk  of 
the  evening  was  setting  in,  when  he  observed  a  stage  coach  crawl- 
ing heavily  up  a  hill,  a  little  ahead  of  him,  and  a  tall,  well-shaped 
man,  walking  alongside  of  it,  and  gesticulating  somewhat  violently. 
Godolphin  remarked  him  with  some  curiosity;  and  the  man, 
turning  abruptly  round,  perceived,  and  in  his  turn  noticed  very 
inquisitively,  the  person  and  aspect  of  the  young  traveller. 

"And  how  now?"  said  he,  presently,  and  in  an  agreeable 
though  familiar  and  unceremonious  tone  of  voice;  "whither  are 
you  bound  this  time  of  day  ?  " 

"It  is  no  business  of  yours,  friend,"  said  the  boy,  with  the 
proud  petulance  of  his  age;  "  mind  what  belongs  to  yourself." 

"  You  are  sharp  on  me,  young  sir,"  returned  the  other  :  "  but 
it  is  our  business  to  be  loquacious.  Know,  sir," — and  the 
stranger  frowned—"  that  we  have  ordered  many  a  taller  fellow 
than  yourself  to  execution,  for  a  much  smaller  insolence  than  you 
seem  capable  of." 

A  laugh  from  the  coach  caused  Godolphin  to  lift  up  his  eyes, 
and  he  saw  the  door  of  the  vehicle  half  open,  as  if  for  coolness, 
and  an  arch  female  face  looking  down  on  him. 

"  You  are  merry  on  me,  I  see,"  said  Percy;  "come  out,  and 
I'll  be  even  with  you,  pretty  one." 

The  lady  laughed  yet  more  loudly  at  the  premature  gallantry 
of  the  traveller,  but  the  man,  without  heeding  her,  and  laying  his 
hand  on  Percy's  shoulder,  said  : 


24  GODOLPHIN. 

"  Pray,  sir,  do  you  live  at  B ?  "  naming  the  town  they  were 

now  approaching. 

"Not  I,"  said  Godolphin,  freeing  himself  from  the  intrusion. 

"  You  will,  perhaps,  sleep  there?  " 

"Perhaps  I  shall." 

"You  are  too  young  to  travel  alone." 

"And  you  are  too  old  to  make  such  impertinent  remarks,"  re- 
torted Godolphin,  reddening  with  anger. 

"Faith,  I  like  this  spirit,  my  Hotspur,"  said  the  stranger, 
coolly.  "If  you  are  really  going  to  put  up  for  the  night  at 
B ,  suppose  we  sup  together?  " 

"  And  who  and  what  are  you  ?  "  asked  Percy,  bluntly. 

"  Anything  and  everything  !     In  other  words,  an  actor  !  " 

"  And  the  young  lady —  ?  " 

"  Is  our  prima  donna.  In  fact,  except  our  driver,  the  coach 
holds  none  but  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  our  company.  We 

have  made  an  excellent  harvest  at  A ,  and  we  are  now  on  our 

way  to  the  theatre  at  B ;  pretty  theatre  it  is,  too,  and  has  been 

known  to  hold  seventy-one  pounds  eight  shillings."  Here  the 
actor  fell  into  a  revery ;  and  Percy,  moving  nearer  to  the  coach- 
door,  glanced  at  the  damsel,  who  returned  the  look  with  a  laugh 
which,  though  coquettish,  was  too  low  and  musical  to  be  called 
bold. 

"  So  that  gentleman,  so  free  and  easy  in  his  manners,  is  not 
your  husband  ?  ' ' 

"  Heaven  forbid  !  Do  you  think  I  should  be  so  gay  if  he  were? 
But,  pooh!  what  can  you  know  of  married  life?  No!  "  she 
continued,  with  a  pretty  air  of  mock  dignity;  "  I  am  the  Belvi- 
dera,  the  Calista,  of  the  company ;  above  all  control,  all  hus- 
banding, and  reaping  thirty-three  shillings  a-week." 

"  But  are  you  above  lovers  as  well  as  husbands  ?  "  asked  Percy, 
with  a  rakish  air,  borrowed  from  Saville. 

' '  Bless  the  boy  !  No :  but  then  my  lovers  must  be  at  least  as 
tall,  and  at  least  as  rich,  and,  I  am  afraid,  at  least  as  old,  as  my- 
self." 

"Don't  frighten  yourself,  my  dear,"  returned  Percy;  "/was 
not  about  to  make  love  to  you." 

"  Were  you  not?  Yes,  you  were,  and  you  know  it.  But  why 
will  not  you  sup  with  us?" 

"Why  not,  indeed?"  thought  Percy,  as  the  idea,  thus  more 
enticingly  put  than  it  was  at  first,  pressed  upon  him.  "If  you 
ask  me,"  said  he,  "  I  will." 

"I  do  ask  you,  then,"  said  the  actress;  and  here  the  hero  of 


GODOLPHIN.  25 

.    — ,    .     -,    x     - 

the  company  turned  abruptly  round  with  a  theatrical  start,  and 
exclaimed,  "To  sup  or  not  to  sup?  that  is  the  question." 

"To  sup,  sir,"  said  Godolphin. 

' '  Very  well !  I  am  glad  to  hear  it.  Had  you  not  better 
mount,  and  rest  yourself  in  the  coach  ?  You  can  take  my  place 
— I  am  studying  a  new  part.  We  have  two  miles  farther  to 
B yet." 

Percy  accepted  the  invitation,  and  was  soon  by  the  side  of  the 
pretty  actress.  The  horses  broke  into  a  slow  trot,  and  thus,  de- 
lighted with  his  adventure,  the  son  of  the  ascetic  Godolphin,  the 
pupil  of  the  courtly  Saville,  entered  the  town  of  B ,  and  com- 
menced his  first  independent  campaign  in  the  great  world. 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  MUMMERS. — GODOLPHIN  IN  LOVE. — THE  EFFECT  OF  FANNY 
MILLINGER'S  ACTING  UPON  HIM. — THE  TWO  OFFERS. — GODOLPHIN 
QUITS  THE  PLAYERS. 

OUR  travellers  stopped  at  the  first  inn  in  the  outskirts  of  the 
town.  Here  they  were  shown  into  a  large  room  on  the  ground- 
floor,  sanded,  with  a  long  table  in  the  -centre ;  and,  before  the 
supper  was  served,  Percy  had  leisure  to  examine  all  the  compan- 
ions with  whom  he  had  associated  himself. 

In  the  first  place,  there  was  an  old  gentleman,  of  the  age  of 
sixty-three,  in  a  bob-wig,  and  inclined  to  be  stout,  who  always 
played  the  lover.  He  was  equally  excellent  in  the  pensive  Borneo 
and  the  bustling  Rapid.  He  had  an  ill  way  of  talking  off  the 
stage,  partly  because  he  had  lost  all  his  front  teeth :  a  circum- 
stance which  made  him  avoid,  in  general,  those  parts  in  which  he 
had  to  force  a  great  deal  of  laughter.  Next,  there  was  a  little 
girl,  of  about  fourteen,  who  played  angels,  fairies,  and  at  a  pinch, 
was  very  effective  as  an  old  woman.  Thirdly,  there  was  our  free- 
and-easy  cavalier,  who,  having  a  loud  voice  and  a  manly  pres- 
ence, usually  performed  the  tyrant.  He  was  great  in  "  Mac- 
beth," greater  in  "  Bombastes  Furioso."  Fourthly,  came  this 
gentleman's  wife,  a  pretty,  slatternish  woman,  much  painted. 
She  usually  performed  the  second  female — the  confidant,  the 
chambermaid — the  Emilia  to  the  Desdemona.  And  fifthly,  was 
Percy's  new  inamorata, — a  girl  of  about  one-and-twenty,  fair, 
with  a  nez  retrousse :  beautiful  auburn  hair,  that  was  always  a 
little  dishevelled ;  the  prettiest  mouth,  teeth,  and  dimple  imag- 
inable ;  a  natural  color ;  and  a  person  that  promised  to  incline 
hereafter  towards  that  roundness  of  proportion  which  is  more 


26  GODOLPHIN. 

dear  to  the  sensual  than  the  romantic.  This  girl,  whose  name 
was  Fanny  Millinger,  was  of  so  frank,  good-humored,  and  lively 
a  turn,  that  she  was  the  idol  of  the  whole  company,  and  her  supe- 
riority in  acting  was  never  made  a  matter  of  jealousy.  Actors 
may  believe  this,  or  not,  as  they  please. 

• '  But  is  this  all  your  company  ?  ' '  said  Percy. 

"  All?  No  !  "  replied  Fanny,  taking  off  her  bonnet,  and  curl- 
ing up  her  tresses  by  the  help  of  a  dim  glass.  ' '  The  rest  are 
provided  at  the  theatre  along  with  the  candle-snuffer  and  scene- 
shifters — part  of  the  fixed  property.  Why  won't  you  take  to  the 
stage  ?  I  wish  you  would  !  You  would  make  a  very  respectable 
—page." 

"  Upon  my  word  !  "  said  Percy,  exceedingly  offended. 

"Come,  come  !  "  cried  the  actress,  clapping  her  hands,  and 
perfectly  unheeding  his  displeasure.  "Why  don't  you  help  me 
off  with  my  cloak?  Why  don't  you  set  me  a  chair?  Why  don't 
you  take  this  great  box  out  of  my  way  ?  Why  don't  you — Heaven 
help  me  !  "  and  she  stamped  her  little  foot  quite  seriously  on  the 
floor.  "  A  pretty  person  for  a  lover  you  are !  " 

"  Oho!     Then  I  am  a  lover,  you  acknowledge?  " 

"  Nonsense  !     Get  a  chair  next  me  at  supper." 

The  young  Godolphin  was  perfectly  fascinated  by  the  lively 
actress;  and  it  was  with  no  small  interest  that  he  stationed  him- 
self the  following  night  in  the  stage-box  of  the  little  theatre  at 

,  to  see  how  his  Fanny  acted.  The  house  was  tolerably  well 

filled,  and  the  play  was  "She  Stoops  to  Conquer."  The  male 
parts  were,  on  the  whole,  respectably  managed ;  though  Percy 
was  somewhat  surprised  to  observe  that  a  man,  who  had  joined 
the  corps  that  morning,  blessed  with  the  most  solemn  countenance 
in  the  world — a  fine  Roman  nose,  and  a  forehead  like  a  sage's — 
was  now  dressed  in  nankeen  tights,  and  a  coat  without  skirts, 
splitting  the  sides  of  the  gallery  in  the  part  of  Tony  Lumpkin. 
But  into  the  heroine,  Fanny  Millinger  threw  a  grace,  a  sweetness, 
a  simple,  yet  dignified  spirit  of  true  love,  that  at  once  charmed 
and  astonished  all  present.  The  applause  was  unbounded  ;  and 
Percy  Godolphin  felt  proud  of  himself  for  having  admired  one 
whom  every  one  else  seemed  also  resolved  upon  admiring. 

When  the  comedy  was  finished  he  went  behind  the  scenes,  and 
for  the  first  time  felt  the  rank  which  intellect  bestows.  This  idle 
girl,  with  whom  he  had  betore  been  so  familiar  ;  who  had  seemed 
to  him,  boy  as  he  was,  only  made  for  jesting,  and  coquetry,  and 
trifling,  he  now  felt  to  be  raised  to  a  sudden  eminence  that 
startled  and  abashed  him.  He  became  shy  and  awkward,  and 


GODOLPHIN.  27 

stood  at  a  distance  stealing  a  glance  towards  her,  but  without  the 
courage  to  approach  and  compliment  her. 

The  quick  eye  of  the  actress  detected  the  effect  she  had  pro- 
duced. She  was  naturally  pleased  at  it,  and  coming  up  to  Godol- 
phin, she  touched  his  shoulder,  and  with  a  smile  rendered  still 
more  brilliant  by  the  rouge  yet  unwashed  from  the  dimpled  cheeks, 
said:  "Well,  most  awkward  swain  ?  No  flattery  ready  for  me  ? 
Go  to!  you  won't  suit  me:  get  yourself  another  empress  !  " 

"You  have  pleased  me  into  respecting  you,"  said  Godolphin. 

There  was  a  delicacy  in  the  expression  that  was  very  charac- 
teristic of  the  real  mind  of  the  speaker,  though  that  mind  was  not 
yet  developed  ;  and  the  pretty  actress  was  touched  by  it  at  the 
moment,  though,  despite  the  grace  of  her  acting,  she  was  by 
nature  far  too  volatile  to  think  it  at  all  advantageous  to  be 
respected  on  the  long  run.  She  did  not  act  in  the  after-piece,  and 
Godolphin  escorted  her  home  to  the  inn. 

So  long  as  his  ten  guineas  lasted — which  the  reader  will  con- 
ceive was  not  very  long — Godolphin  stayed  with  the  gay  troop, 
as  the  welcome  lover  of  its  chief  ornament.  To  her  he  confided 
his  name  and  history  :  she  laughed  heartily  at  the  latter,  for  she 
was  one  of  Venus's  true  children,  fond  of  striking  mirth  out  of  all 
subjects.  "But  what,"  said  she,  patting  his  cheek  affectionately, 
"what  should  hinder  you  from  joining  us  for  a  little  while ?  I 
could  teach  you  to  be  an  actor  in  three  lessons.  Come  now, 
attend  !  It  is  but  a  mere  series  of  tricks,  this  art  that  seems  to 
you  so  admirable." 

Godolphin  grew  embarrassed.  There  was  in  him  a  sort  of 
hidden  pride  that  could  never  endure  to  subject  itself  to  the  cen- 
sure of  others.  He  had  no  propensity  to  imitation,  and  he  had  a 
strong  susceptibility  to  the  ridiculous.  These  traits  of  mind  thus 
early  developed — which  in  later  life  prevented  his  ever  finding  fit 
scope  for  his  natural  powers,  which  made  him  too  proud  to  bustle 
and  too  philosophical  to  shine — were  of  service  to  him  on  this 
occasion,  and  preserved  him  from  the  danger  into  which  he  might 
otherwise  have  fallen.  He  could  not  be  persuaded  to  act :  the 
fair  Fanny  gave  up  the  attempt  in  despair.  "  Yet  stay  with  us," 
said  she,  tenderly,  ' '  and  share  my  poor  earnings. ' ' 

Godolphin  started ;  and  in  the  wonderful  contradictions  of  the 
proud  human  heart,  this  generous  offer  from  the  poor  actress  gave 
him  a  distaste,  a  displeasure,  that  almost  reconciled  him  to  part- 
ing from  her.  It  seemed  to  open  to  him  at  once  the  equivocal 
mode  of  life,  he  had  entered  upon.  "  No,  Fanny,"  said  he,  after 
a  pause,  ' '  I  am  here  because  I  resolved  to  be  independent :  I 
cannot,  therefore,  choose  dependence." 


28  GODOLPHIN. 

"Miss  Millinger  is  wanted  instantly  for  rehearsal,"  said  the 
little  girl  who  acted  fairies  and  old  women,  putting  her  head 
suddenly  into  the  room. 

' '  Bless  me !  "  cried  Fanny,  starting  up ;  "  is  it  so  late  !  Well, 
I  must  go  now.  Good-by  !  Look  in  upon  us — do  !  " 

But  Godolphin,  moody  and  thoughtful,  walked  into  the  street ; 
and  lo  !  the  first  thing  that  greeted  his  eyes  was  a  handbill  on  the 
wall,  describing  his  own  person,  and  offering  twenty  guineas 
reward  for  his  detention.  "Let  him  return  to  his  afflicted 
parent,"  was  the  conclusion  of  the  bill,  "and  all  shall  be  for- 
given." 

Godolphin  crept  back  to  his  apartment ;  wrote  a  long,  affec- 
tionate letter  to  Fanny  ;  enclosed  her  his  watch,  as  the  only  keep- 
sake in  his  power  j  gave  her  his  address  at  Saville's ;  and  then, 
towards  dusk,  once  more  sallied  forth,  and  took  a  place  in  the 
mail  for  London.  He  had  no  money  for  his  passage,  but  his 
appearance  was  such  that  the  coachman  readily  trusted  him  ;  and 
the  next  morning  at  daybreak  he  was  under  Saville's  roof. 

CHAPTER  VI. 

PERCY   GODOLPHIN   THE  GUEST  OF  SAVILLE. — HE   ENTERS  THE   LIFE 
GUARDS  AND  BECOMES  THE  FASHION. 

"  AND  so,"  said  Saville,  laughing,  uyou  really  gave  them  the 
slip  :  excellent !  But  I  envy  you  your  adventures  with  the  player 
folk.  Gad  !  if  I  were  some  years  younger,  I  would  join  them  myself ; 
I  should  act  Sir  Pertinax  Macsycophant  famously ;  I  have 
a  touch  of  the  mime  in  me.  Well !  but  what  do  you  propose 
to  do  !  Live  with  me  ? — eh !  " 

"  Why,  I  think  that  might  be  the  best,  and  certainly  it  would 
be  the  pleasantest,  mode  of  passing  my  life.  But — " 

"But  what?" 

"Why,  I  can  scarcely  quarter  myself  on  your  courtesy;  I 
should  soon  grow  discontented.  So  I  shall  write  to  my  father, 
whom  I,  kindly  and  considerately,  by  the  way,  informed  of  my 

safety  the  very  first  day  of  my  arrival  at  B .  I  told  him  to 

direct  his  letters  to  your  house  ;  but  I  regret  to  find  that  the  handbill 
which  so  frightened  me  from  my  propriety  is  the  only  notice  he 
has  deigned  to  take  of  my  whereabout.  I  shall  write  to  him 
therefore  again,  begging  him  to  let  me  enter  the  army.  It  is  not 
a  profession  I  much  fancy ;  but  what  then  ?  I  shall  be  my  own 
master." 


GODOLPHIN.  5$ 

' '  Very  well  said  !  ' '  answered  Saville ;  ' '  and  here  I  hope  I  can 
serve  you.  If  your  father  will  pay  the  lawful  sum  for  a  commiss- 
ion in  the  Guards,  why,  I  think  I  have  interest  to  get  you  in  for 
that  sum  alone — no  trifling  favor." 

Godolphin  was  enchanted  at  this  proposal,  and  instantly  wrote 
to  his  father,  urging  it  strongly  upon  him ;  Saville,  in  a  separate 
epistle,  seconded  the  motion.  ''You  see,"  wrote  the  latter; 
"You  see,  my  dear  sir,  that  your  son  is  a  wild,  resolute  scrape- 
grace.  You  can  do  nothing  with  him  by  schools  and  coercion  : 
put  him  to  discipline  in  the  King's  service,  and  condemn  him  to 
live  on  his  pay.  It  is  a  cheap  mode,  after  all,  of  providing  for  a 
reprobate;  and  as  he  will  have  the  good  fortune  to  enter  the 
army  at  so  early  an  age,  by  the  time  he  is  thirty,  he  maybe  a  col- 
onel on  full  pay.  Seriously,  this  is  the  best  thing  you  can  do 
with  him, — unlesss  you  have  a  living  in  your  family." 

The  old  gentleman  was  much  discomposed  by  these  letters,  and 
by  his  son's  previous  elopement.  He  could  not,  however,  but 
foresee,  that  if  he  resisted  the  boy's  wishes,  he  was  likely  to  have 
a  troublesome  time  of  it.  Scrape  after  scrape,  difficulty  follow- 
ing difficulty,  might  ensue,  all  costing  both  excitement  and 
money.  The  present  offer  furnished  him  with  a  fair  excuse  for 
ridding  himself,  for  a  long  time  to  come,  of  further  provision  for 
his  offspring  ;  and  now  growing  daily  more  and  more  attached  to  the 
indolent  routine  of  solitary  economies  in  which  he  moved,  he  was 
glad  of  an  opportunity  to  deliver  himself  from  future  interruption, 
and  surrender  his  whole  soul  to  his  favorite  occupation. 

At  length  after  a  fortnight's  delay  and  meditation,  he  wrote 
shortly  to  Saville  and  his  son  ;  saying,  after  much  reproach  to  the 
latter,  that  if  the  commission  could  really  be  purchased  at  the 
sum  specified,  he  was  willing  to  make  the  sacrifice,  for  which  he 
must  pinch  himself,  and  conclude  the  business.  This  touched 
the  son,  but  Saville  laughed  him  out  of  the  twinge  of  good  feel- 
ing ;  and  very  shortly  afterwards,  Percy  Godolphin  was  gazetted 
as  a  cornet  in  the Life-Guards. 

The  life  of  a  soldier,  in  peace,  is  indolent  enough,  Heaven 
knows !  Percy  liked  the  new  uniforms  and  the  horses,  all  of 
which  were  bought  on  credit.  He  liked  his  new  companions ;  he 
liked  balls;  he  liked  flirting  ;  he  did  not  dislike  Hyde  Park  from 
four  o'clock  till  six ;  and  he  was  not  very  much  bored  by  drills 
and  parade.  It  was  much  to  his  credit  in  the  world  that  he  was 
the  protege  of  a  man  who  had  so  great  a  character  for  profligacy 
and  gambling  as  Augustus  Saville  ;  and  under  such  auspices  he 
found  himself  launched  at  once  into  the  full  tide  of  "good  soci- 
ety." 


36  GODOLPHltf. 

Young,  romantic,  high-spirited,  with  the  classic  features  of  an 
Antinous,  and  a  very  pretty  nack  of  complimenting  and  writing 
verses,  Percy  Godolphin  soon  became,  while  yet  more  fit  in  years 
for  the  nursery  than  the  world,  "the  curled  darling"  of  that 
wide  class  of  high-born  women  who  have  nothing  to  do  but  to 
hear  love  made  to  them,  and  who,  all  artifice  themselves,  think 
the  love  sweetest  that  springs  from  the  most  natural  source.  They 
like  boyhood  when  it  is  not  bashful ;  and  from  sixteen  to  twenty, 
a  Juan  need  scarcely  go  to  Saville  to  find  a  Julia. 

But  love  was  not  the  worst  danger  that  menaced  the  intoxica- 
ted boy.  Saville,  the  most  seductive  of  tutors — Saville  who,  in 
his  wit,  his  ban  ton,  his  control  over  the  great  world,  seemed  as  a 
god  to  all  less  elevated  and  less  aspiring — Saville  was  Godolphin's 
constant  companion  ;  and  Saville  was  worse  than  a  profligate,  he 
was  a  gambler  !  One  would  think  that  gaming  was  the  last  vice 
that  could  fascinate  the  young  :  its  avarice,  its  grasping,  its  hid- 
eous selfishness,  its  cold,  calculating  meanness,  would,  one  might 
imagine,  scare  away  all  who  have  yet  no  other  and  softer  deities 
to  worship.  But,  in  fact,  the  fault  of  youth  is,  that  it  can  rarely 
resist  whatever  is  the  Mode.  Gaming,  in  all  countries,  is  the  vice 
of  an  aristocracy.  The  young  find  it  already  established  in  the 
best  circles  ;  they  are  enticed  by  the  habit  of  others,  and  ruined 
when  the  habit  becomes  their  own. 

"  You  look  feverish,  Percy,"  said  Saville,  as  he  met  his  pupil 
in  the  Park.  "I  don't  wonder  at  it;  you  lost  infernally  last 
night." 

"  More  than  I  can  pay,"  replied  Percy,  with  a  quivering  lip. 

' '  No  !  You  shall  pay  it  to-morrow,  for  you  shall  go  shares 
with  me  to-night.  Observe,"  continued  Saville,  lowering  his 
voice,  "  I  never  /ose." 

"How!     Never?" 

"Never,  unless  by  design.  I  play  at  no  game  where  chance 
only  presides.  Whist  is  my  favorite  game  :  it  is  not  popular  :  I 
am  sorry  for  it.  I  take  up  with  other  games,  I  am  forced  to  do 
it ;  but,  even  at  rouge  et  noir,  I  carry  about  with  me  the  rules  of 
whist.  I  calculate — I  remember." 

"But  hazard.'" 

"I  never  play  that!"  said  Saville,  solemnly.  "It  is  the 
devil's  game ;  it  defies  skill.  Forsake  hazard,  and  let  me  teach 
you  ecarte ;  it  is  coming  into  fashion." 

Saville  took  great  pains  with  Godolphin ;  and  Godolphin,  who 
was  by  nature  of  a  contemplative,  not  hasty  mood,  was  no  super- 
ficial disciple.  As  his  biographer,  I  grieve  to  confess  that  he  be- 
came, though  a  punctiliously  honest,  a  wise  and  fortunate  games- 


GODOLPHIX.  JJ 

ter;  and  thus  eked  out  betimes  the  slender  profits  of  a  subaltern's 
pay. 

This  was  the  first  great  deterioration  in  Percy's  mind — a  mind 
which  ought  to  have  made  him  a  very  different  being  from  what 
he  became,  but  which  no  vice,  no  evil  example,  could  ever  en- 
tirely pervert. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

SAV1LLE   EXCUSED    FOR   HAVING    HUMAN    AFFECTIONS. — GODOLPHIN 
SEES  ONE  WHOM  HE  NEVER  SEES  AGAIN. — THE  NEW  ACTRESS. 

SAVILLE  was  deemed  the  consumate  man  of  the  world — wise  and 
heartless.  How  came  he  to  take  such  gratuituous  pains  with  the 
boy  Godolphin?  In  the  first  place,  Saville  had  no  legitimate 
children  ;  Godolphin  was  his  relation  :  in  the  second  place,  it 
may  be  observed,  that  hackneyed  and  sated  men  of  the  world  are 
fond  of  the  young,  in  whom  they  recognize  something — a  better 
something — belonging  to  themselves.  In  Godolphin's  gentleness 
and  courage,  Saville  thought  he  saw  the  mirror  of  his  own  crusted 
urbanity  and  scheming  perseverance  ;  in  Godolphin's  fine  ima- 
gination and  subtle  intellect  he  beheld  his  own  cunning  and  hy- 
pocrisy. The  boy's  popularity  flattered  him ;  the  boy's  conver- 
sation amused.  No  man  is  so  heartless  but  that  he  is  capable  of 
strong  likings,  when  they  do  not  put  him  much  out  of  his  way  : 
it  was  this  sort  of  liking  that  Saville  had  for  Godolphin.  Besides, 
there  was  yet  another  reason  for  attachment,  which  might  at  first 
seem  too  delicate  to  actuate  the  refined  voluptuary ;  but  examined 
closely,  the  delicacy  vanished.  Saville  had  loved — at  least  he  had 
offered  his  hand  to — Godolphin's  mother  (she  was  supposed 
an  heiress  !)  He  thought  he  had  just  missed  being  Godolphin's 
father :  his  vanity  made  him  like  to  show  the  boy  what  a  much 
better  father  he  would  have  been  than  the  one  Providence  had 
given  him.  His  resentment,  too,  against  the  accepted  suitor, 
made  him  love  to  exercise  a  little  spiteful  revenge  against  Godol- 
phin's father  :  he  was  glad  to  show  that  the  son  preferred  where 
the  mother  rejected.  All  these  motives  combined  made  Saville 
take,  as  it  were,  to  the  young  Percy,  and  being  rich,  and  habit- 
ually profuse,  though  prudent,  and  a  shrewd  speculator  withal, 
the  pecuniary  part  of  his  kindness  cost  him  no  pain.  But  Godol- 
phin, who  was  not  ostentatious,  did  not  trust  himself  largely  to 
the  capricious  fount  of  the  worldling's  generosity.  Fortune 
smiled  on  her  boyish  votary ;  and  during  the  short  time  he  was 


32  GODOLPHIN'. 

obliged  to  cultivate  her  favors,  showered  on  him,  at  least  a  suffi- 
ciency for  support,  or  even  for  display. 

Crowded  with  fine  people,  and  blazing  with  light,  were  the 

rooms  of  the  Countess  of  B ,  as,  flushed  from  a  late  dinner 

at  Saville's,  young  Godolphin  made  his  appearance  in  the  scene. 
He  was  not  of  those  numerous  gentlemen,  the  stock-flowers  of  the 
parterre,  who  stick  themselves  up  against  walls  in  the  panoply  of 
neckclothed  silence.  He  came  not  to  balls,  from  the  vulgar 
motive  of  being  seen  there  in  the  most  conspicuous  situation — a 
motive  so  apparent  among  the  stiff  exquisites  of  England.  He 
came  to  amuse  himself;  and  if  he  found  no  one  capable  of  amus- 
ing him,  he  saw  no  necessity  in  staying.  He  was  always  seen, 
therefore,  conversing,  or  dancing,  or  listening  to  music — or  he 
was  not  seen  at  all. 

In  exchanging  a  few  words  with  a  Colonel  D ,  a  noted  rou£ 

and  gamester,  he  observed,  gazing  on  him  very  intently — and  as 
Percy  thought,  very  rudely — an  old  gentleman  in  a  dress  of  the 
last  century.  Turn  where  he  would,  Godolphin  could  not  rid 
himself  of  the  gaze ;  so  at  length  he  met  it  with  a  look  of  equal 
scrutiny  and  courage.  The  old  gentleman  slowly  approached. 
"  Percy  Godolphin,  I  think?  "  said  he. 

"That  is  my  name,  sir,"  replied  Percy.     "Yours — 

"  No  matter  !  Yet  stay  !  you  shall  know  it.  I  am  Henry  John- 
stone — old  Harry  Johnstone.  You  have  heard  of  him  ?  your 
father's  first  cousin.  Well,  I  grieve,  young  sir,  to  find  that  you 
associate  with  that  rascal  Saville.  Nay,  never  interrupt  me,  sir  ! 
I  grieve  to  find  that  you,  thus  young,  thus  unguarded,  are  left  to 
be  ruined  in  heart  and  corrupted  in  nature  by  any  one  who  will 
take  the  trouble !  Yet  I  like  your  countenance ! — I  like  your 
countenance !  It  is  open,  yet  thoughtful ;  frank,  and  yet  it  has 
something  of  melancholy.  You  have  not  Charles's  colored  hair  ; 
but  you  are  much  younger — much.  I  am  glad  I  have  seen  you  ; 
I  came  here  on  purpose ;  good-night !  " — and  without  waiting  for 
an  answer,  the  old  man  disappeared. 

Godolphin,  recovering  his  surprise,  recollected  that  he  had 
often  heard  his  father  speak  of  a  rich  and  eccentric  relation 
named  Johnstone :  this  singular  interview  made  a  strong  but  mo- 
mentary impression  on  him.  He  intended  to  seek  out  the  old 
man's  residence ;  but  one  thing  or  another  drove  away  the  fulfil- 
ment of  the  intention,  and  in  this  world  the  relations  never  met 
again. 

Percy,  now  musingly  gliding  through  the  crowd,  sank  into  a 
seat  beside  a  lady  of  forty-five,  who  sometimes  amused  herself  in 
making  love  to  him— because  there  could  be  no  harm  in  such  a 


GODOLPHIN.  33 

mere  boy  ! — and  presently  afterwards,  a  Lord  George  Somebody 
sauntering  up,  asked  the  lady  if  he  had  not  seen  her  at  the  play 
on  the  previous  night. 

"  Oh,  yes  !  we  went  to  see  the  new  actress.  How  pretty  she 
is !  so  unaffected  too ;  how  well  she  sings  !  " 

"Pretty  well — er !  "  replied  Lord  George,  passing  his  hand 
through  his  hair.  "  Very  nice  girl — er  ! — good  ankles.  Devilish 
hot — er,  is  not  it — er — er  ?  What  a  bore  this  is  :  eh  !  Ah  !  Godol- 
phin  !  don't  forget  Wattier's — er  !  "  and  his  lordship  er'd  him- 
self off. 

"  What  actress  is  this?  " 

"Oh,  a  very  good  one,  indeed!  came  out  in  'The  Belle's 
Stratagem.'  We  are  going  to  see  her  to-morrow  :  will  you  dine 
with  us  early,  and  be  our  cavalier?  " 

"  Nothing  will  please  me  more.  Your  ladyship  has  dropped 
your  handkerchief." 

"Thank  you  !  "  said  the  lady,  bending  till  her  hair  touched 
Godolphin's  cheek,  and  gently  pressing  the  hand  that  was 
extended  to  her.  It  was  a  wonder  that  Godolphin  never  became  a 
coxcomb. 

He  dined  at  Wattier's  the  next  day  according  to  appointment : 
he  went  to  the  play ;  and  at  the  moment  his  eye  first  turned  to 
the  stage,  an  universal  burst  of  applause  indicated  the  entrance 
of  the  new  actress — Fanny  Millinger  ! 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

GODOLPHIN'S  PASSION  FOR  THE  STAGE — THE  DIFFERENCE  IT  ENGEN- 
DERED IN  HIS  HABITS  OF  LIFE. 

Now  this  event  produced  a  great  influence  over  Godolphin's 
habits,  and  I  suppose,  therefore,  I  may  add,  over  his  character. 
He  renewed  his  acquaintance  with  the  lively  actress. 
<  What  a  change  !  "  cried  both. 
'  The  strolling  player  risen  into  celebrity  !  " 
'  And  the  runaway  boy  polished  into  fashion !  " 
'  You  are  handsomer  than  ever,  Fanny." 
'I  return  the  compliment,"  replied  Fanny,  with  a  curtsey. 
And  now  Godolphin  became  a  constant  attendant  at  the  theatre. 
This  led  him  into  a  mode  of  life  quite  different  from  that  which 
he  had  lately  cultivated. 

There  are  in  London  two  sets  of  idle  men  :  one  set,  the  butter- 
flies of  balls ;  the  loungers  of  the  regular  walks  of  society ; 
diners  out;  the  "  old  familiar  faces,"  seen  everywhere,  known  to 

3 


34  GODOLPHIN. 

everyone:  the  other  set,  a  more  wild,  irregular,  careless  race, 
who  go  little  into  parties,  and  vote  balls  a  nuisance  ;  who  live  in 
clubs;  frequent  theatres ;  drive  about  late  o'nights  in  mysterious 
looking  vehicles,  and  enjoy  a  vast  acquaintance  among  the  Aspa- 
sias  of  pleasure.  These  are  the  men  who  are  the  critics  of 
theatricals :  black-neckclothed  and  well-booted,  they  sit  in  their 
boxes  and  decide  on  the  ankles  of  a  dancer  or  the  voice  of  a 
singer.  They  have  a  smattering  of  literature,  and  use  a  great  deal 
of  French  in  their  conversation  :  they  have  something  of  romance 
in  their  composition,  and  have  been  known  to  marry  for  love.  In 
short,  there  is  in  their  whole  nature,  a  more  roving,  liberal,  Con- 
tinental character  of  dissipation,  than  belongs  to  the  cold,  tame, 
dull,  prim,  hedge-clipped  indolence  of  more  national  exquisitism. 
Into  this  set,  out  of  the  other  set,  fell  young  Godolphin ;  and 
oh !  the  merry  mornings  at  actresses'  houses ;  the  jovial  suppers 
after  the  play;  the  buoyancy,  the  brilliancy,  the  esprit,  with 
which  the  hours,  from  midnight  to  cockcrow,  were  often  pelted 
with  rose-leaves  and  drowned  in  Rhenish. 

By  degrees,  however,  as  Godolphin  warmed  into  his  attendance 
at  the  playhouses,  the  fine  intellectual  something  that  lay  yet  un- 
destroyed  at  his  heart  stirred  up  emotions  which  he  felt  his  more 
vulgar  associates  were  unfitted  to  share. 

There  is  that  in  theatrical  representation  which  perpetually 
awakens  whatever  romance  belongs  to  our  character.  The  magic 
lights ;  the  pomp  of  scene  ;  the  palace,  the  camp ;  the  forest ;  the 
midnight  wold ;  the  moonlight  reflected  on  the  water ;  the  melody 
of  the  tragic  rhythm  ;  the  grace  of  the  comic  wit;  the  strange  art 
that  gives  such  meaning  to  the  poet's  lightest  word ;  the  fair, 
false,  exciting  life  that  is  detailed  before  us,  crowding  into  some 
three  little  hours  all  that  our  most  busy  ambition  could  desire — 
love,  enterprise,  war,  glory  !  the  kindling  exaggeration  of  the 
sentiments  which  belong  to  the  stage,  like  our  own  in  our  boldest 
moments — all  these  appeals  to  our  finer  senses  are  not  made  in 
vain.  Our  taste  for  castle-building  and  visions  deepens  upon  us; 
and  we  chew  a  mental  opium  which  stagnates  all  the  other  facul- 
ties, but  wakens  that  of  the  ideal. 

Godolphin  was  peculiarly  fascinated  by  the  stage ;  he  loved  to 
steal  away  from  his  companions,  and,  alone  and  unheeded,  to 
feast  his  mind  on  the  unreal  stream  of  existence  that  mirrored 
images  so  beautiful.  And  oh  !  while  yet  we  are  young ;  while 
yet  the  dew  lingers  on  the  green  leaf  of  spring ;  while  all  the 
brighter,  the  more  enterprising  part  of  the  future  is  to  come  ;  while 
we  know  not  whether  the  true  life  may  not  be  visionary  and  excit- 
ed as  the  false — how  deep  and  rich  a  transport  is  it  to  see,  to 


GODOLPHIN.  35 

feel,  to  hear  Shakespeare's  conceptions  made  actual,  though  all 
imperfectly,  and  only  for  an  hour  !  Sweet  Arden  !  are  we  in  thy 
forest?  Thy  "shadowy  groves  and  unfrequented  glens ?"  Rosa- 
lind, Jaques,  Orlando,  have  you  indeed  a  being  upon  earth  !  Ah  ! 
this  is  true  enchantment !  And  when  we  turn  back  to  life,  we 
turn  from  the  colors  which  the  Claude  glass  breathes  over  a  win- 
ter's landscape  to  the  nakedness  of  the  landscape  itself! 

CHAPTER  IX. 

THE   LEGACY. A   NEW    DEFORMITY    IN    SAVILLE. THE   NATURE  OF 

WORLDLY   LIAISONS. GODOLPHIN   LEAVES   ENGLAND. 

BUT  then,  it  is  not  always  a  sustainer  of  the  stage  delusion  to  be 
enamoured  of  an  actress :  it  takes  us  too  much  behind  the  scenes. 
Godolphin  felt  this  so  strongly  that  he  liked  those  plays  least  in 
which  Fanny  performed.  Off  the  stage  her  character  had  so  little 
romance,  that  he  could  not  deceive  himself  into  the  romance  of 
her  character  before  the  lamps.  Luckily,  however,  Fanny  did 
not  attempt  Shakespeare.  She  was  inimitable  in  vaudeville,  in 
farce,  and  in  the  lighter  comedy ;  but  she  had  prudently  aban- 
doned tragedy  in  deserting  the  barn.  She  was  a  girl  of  much 
talent  and  quickness,  and  discovered  exactly  the  paths  in  which 
her  vanity  could  walk  without  being  wounded.  And  there  was  a 
simplicity,  a  frankness,  about  her  manner,  that  made  a  most 
agreeable  companion. 

The  attachment  between  her  and  Godolphin  was  not  very  vio- 
lent ;  it  was  a  silken  tie,  which  opportunity  could  knit  and  snap  a 
hundred  times  over  without  doing  much  wrong  to  the  hearts  it  so 
lightly  united.  Over  Godolphin  the  attachment  itself  had  no  in- 
fluence, while  the  effects  of  the  attachment  had  an  influence  so 
great. 

One  night,  after  an  absence  from  town  of  two  or  three  days, 
Godolphin  returned  home  from  the  theatre,  and  found  among  the 
letters  waiting  his  arrival  one  from  his  father.  It  was  edged  with 
black ;  the  seal,  too,  was  black.  Godolphin's  heart  misgave  him  : 
tremblingly  he  opened  it,  and  read  as  follows : 

' '  DEAR  PERCY, 

"  I  have  news  for  you,  which  I  do  not  know  whether  I  should 
call  good  or  bad.  On  the  one  hand,  your  cousin,  that  old  oddity, 
Harry  Johnstone,  is  dead,  and  has  left  you,  out  of  his  immense 
fortune,  the  poor  sum  of  twenty  thousand  pounds.  But  mark  !  on 
condition  that  you  leave  the  Guards,  and  either  reside  with  me, 


36  GODOLPHIN. 

or  at  least  leave  London,  till  your  majority  is  attained.  If  you 
refuse  these  conditions  you  lose  the  legacy.  It  is  rather  strange 
that  this  curious  character  should  take  such  pains  with  your 
morals,  and  yet  not  leave  me  a  single  shilling.  But  justice  is  out 
of  fashion  nowadays ;  your  showy  virtues  only  are  the  rage.  I 
beg,  if  you  choose  to  come  down  here,  that  you  will  get  me 
twelve  yards  of  house-flannel;  I  enclose  a  pattern  of  the  quality. 
Snugg,  in  Oxford  Street,  near  Tottenham  Court  Road,  is  my 
man.  It  is  certainly  a  handsome  thing  in  old  Johnstone  :  but  so 
odd  to  omit  me.  How  did  you  get  acquainted  with  him  ?  The 
twenty  thousand  pounds  will,  however,  do  much  for  the  poor  pro- 
perty. Pray  take  care  of  it,  Percy, — pray  do. 

1 '  I  have  have  had  a  touch  of  the  gout,  for  the  first  time.  I 
have  been  too  luxurious :  by  proper  abstinence,  I  trust  to  bring  it 
down.  Compliments  to  that  smooth  rogue,  Saville. 

"  Your  affectionate, 

"A.  G. 

"P.  S.— Discharged  Old  Sally  for  flirting  with  the  butcher's 
boy  :  flirtations  of  that  sort  make  meat  weigh  much  heavier.  Bess 
is  my  only  she-helpmate  now,  besides  the  old  creature  who  shows 
the  ruins  :  so  much  the  better.  What  an  eccentric  creature  that 
Johnstone  was  !  I  hate  eccentric  people." 

The  letter  fell  from  Percy's  hands.  And  this,  then,  was  the 
issue  of  his  singular  interview  with  the  poor  old  man  !  It  was 
events  like  these,  wayward  and  strange  (events  which  checkered 
his  whole  life),  that,  secretly  to  himself,  tinged  Godolphin's 
character  with  superstition.  He  afterwards  dealt  con  amore  with 
fatalities  and  influences. 

You  may  be  sure  that  he  did  not  sleep  much  that  night.  Early 
the  next  morning  he  sought  Saville,  and  imparted  to  him  the  in- 
telligence he  had  received. 

"Droll  enough!"  said  Saville,  languidly,  and  more  than  a 
little  displeased  at  this  generosity  to  Godolphin  from  another ;  for, 
like  all  small-hearted  persons,  he  was  jealous;  "Droll  enough ! 
Hem  !  and  you  never  knew  him  but  once,  and  then  he  abused 
me?  I  wonder  at  that ;  I  was  very  obliging  to  his  vulgar  son." 

"  What !  he  had  a  son,  then  ?  " 

"  Some  two-legged  creature  of  that  sort,  raw  and  bony,  drop- 
ped into  London,  like  a  ptarmigan,  wild,  and  scared  out  of  his 
wits.  Old  Johnstone  was  in  the  country,  taking  care  of  his  wife,  who 
had  lost  the  use  of  her  limbs  ever  since  she  had  been  married ; — 
caught  a  violent — husband — the  first  day  of  wedlock  !  The  boy, 


GODOLPHIN.  37 

sole  son  and  heir,  came  up  to  Town  at  the  age  of  discretion ;  got 
introduced  to  me ;  I  patronized  him ;  brought  him  into  a  decent 
degree  of  fashion  ;  played  a  few  games  at  cards  with  him ;  won 
some  money  ;  would  not  win  any  more ;  advised  him  to  leave  off ; 
too  young  to  play  ;  neglected  my  advice ;  went  on,  and,  d — n 
the  fellow  !  if  he  did  not  cut  his  throat  one  morning ;  and  the 
father,  to  my  astonishment,  laid  the  blame  upon  me  !  " 

Godolphin  stood  appalled  in  speechless  disgust.  He  never 
loved  Saville  from  that  hour. 

"  In  fact,"  resumed  Saville,  carelessly,  "  he  had  lost  very  con- 
siderably. His  father  was  a  stern,  hard  man,  and  the  poor  boy 
was  frightened  at  the  thought  of  his  displeasure.  I  suppose  Mon- 
sieur Papa  imagined  me  a  sort  of  moral  ogre,  eating  up  all  the 
little  youths  that  fall  in  my  way  !  since  he  leaves  you  twenty  thou- 
sand pounds,  on  condition  that  you  take  care  of  yourself,  and 
shun  the  castle  I  live  in.  Well,  well!  'tis  all  very  flattering! 
And  where  will  you  go?  To  Spain  ?  " 

This  story  affected  Percy  sensibly.  He  regretted  deeply  that 
he  had  not  sought  out  the  bereaved  father,  and  been  of  some  com- 
fort to  his  later  hours.  He  appreciated  all  that  warmth  of  sym- 
pathy, that  delicacy  of  heart,  which  had  made  the  old  man  com- 
passionate his  young  relation's  unfriended  lot,  and  couple  his  gift 
with  a  condition,  likely,  perhaps,  to  limit  Percy's  desires  to  the 
independence  thus  bestowed,  and  certain  to  remove  his  more  ten- 
der years  from  a  scene  of  constant  contagion.  Thus  melancholy 
and  thoughtful,  Godolphin  repaired  to  the  house  of  the  now 
famous,  the  now  admired  Miss  Millinger. 

Fanny  received  the  good  news  of  his  fortune  with  a  smile,  and 
the  bad  news  of  his  departure  from  England  with  a  tear.  There 
are  some  attachments,  of  which  we  so  easily  sound  the  depth,  that 
the  one  never  thinks  of  exacting  from  the  other  the  sacrifices  that 
seem  inevitable  to  more  earnest  affections.  Fanny  never  dreamed 
of  leaving  her  theatrical  career,  and  accompanying  Godolphin  ; 
Godolphin  never  dreamed  of  demanding  it.  These  are  the  con- 
nections of  the  great  world :  my  good  reader,  learn  the  great 
world  as  you  look  at  them  ! 

All  was  soon  settled.  Godolphin  was  easily  disembarrassed  of 
his  commission.  Six  hundred  a-year  from  his  fortune  was  allowed 
him  during  his  minority.  He  insisted  on  sharing  this  allowance 
with  his  father ;  the  moiety  left  to  himself  was  quite  sufficient  for 
all  that  a  man  so  young  could  require.  At  the  age  of  little  more 
than  seventeen,  but  with  a  character  which  premature  independ- 
ence had  half  formed,  and  also  half  enervated,  the  young 


3  GODOLPH1N. 

Godolphin  saw  the  shores  of  England  recede  before  him,  and  felt 
himself  alone  in  the  universe — the  lord  of  his  own  fate. 

CHAPTER  X. 

THE  EDUCATION  OF  CONSTANCE'S  MIND. 

MEANWHILE,  Constance  Vernon  grew  up  in  womanhood  and 
beauty.  All  around  her  contributed  to  feed  that  stern  remem- 
brance which  her  lather's  dying  words  had  bequeathed.  Natur- 
ally proud,  quick,  susceptible,  she  felt  slights,  often  merely  inci- 
dental, with  a  deep  and  brooding  resentment.  The  forlorn  and 
dependent  girl  could  not,  indeed,  fail  to  meet  with  many  bitter 
proofs  that  her  situation  was  not  forgotten  by  a  world  in  which 
prosperity  and  station  are  the  cardinal  virtues.  Many  a  loud 
whisper,  many  an  intentional  "  aside,"  reached  her  haughty  ear, 
and  colored  her  pale  cheek.  Such  accidents  increased  her  early- 
formed  asperity  of  thought ;  chilled  the  gushing  flood  of  her 
young  affections ;  and  sharpened,  with  a  relentless  edge,  her  bitter 
and  caustic  hatred  to  a  society  she  deemed  at  once  insolent  and 
worthless.  To  a  taste  intuitively  fine  and  noble,  the  essential 
vulgarities, — the  fierceness  to-day ;  the  cringing  to-morrow  ;  the 
veneration  for  power  ;  the  indifference  to  virtue — which  character- 
ized the  farmers  and  rulers  of  "society,"  could  not  but  bring  con- 
tempt as  well  as  anger ;  and  amidst  the  brilliant  circles,  to  which 
so  many  aspirers  looked  up  with  hopeless  ambition,  Constance 
moved  only  to  ridicule,  to  loathe,  to  despise. 

So  strong,  so  constantly  nourished,  was  this  sentiment  of  con- 
tempt, that  it  lasted  with  equal  bitterness  when  Constance  after- 
wards became  the  queen  and  presider  over  that  great  world  in 
which  she  now  shone, — to  dazzle,  but  not  to  rule.  What  at  first 
might  have  seemed  an  exaggerated  and  insane  prayer  on  the  part 
of  her  father,  grew,  as  her  experience  ripened,  a  natural  and 
laudable  command.  She  was  thrown  entirely  with  that  party 
amongst  whom  were  his  early  friends  and  his  late  deserters.  She 
resolved  to  humble  the  crested  arrogance  around  her,  as  much 
from  her  own  desire,  as  from  the  wish  to  obey  and  avenge  her 
father.  From  contempt  for  rank  rose  naturally  the  ambition  of 
rank.  The  young  beauty  resolved  to  banish  love  from  her  heart ; 
to  devote  herself  to  one  aim  and  object ;  to  win  title  and  station, 
that  she  might  be  able  to  give  power  and  permanence  to  her  dis- 
dain of  those  qualities  in  others ;  and  in  the  secrecy  of  night  she 
repeated  the  vow  which  had  consoled  her  father's  death-bed,  and 
solemnly  resolved  to  crush  love,  within  her  heart,  and  marry 


GODOLPHIN.  39 

solely  for  station  and  for  power.  As  the  daughter  of  so  celebrated 
a  politician,  it  was  natural  that  Constance  should  take  interest  in 
politics.  She  lent  to  every  discussion  of  state  events  an  eager 
and  thirsty  ear.  She  embraced  with  masculine  ardor  such  senti- 
ments as  were  then  considered  the  extreme  of  liberality ;  and  she 
looked  on  that  career  which  society  limits  to  man,  as  the  noblest, 
the  loftiest  in  the  world.  She  regretted  that  she  was  a  woman, 
and  prevented  from  personally  carrying  into  effect  the  sentiments 
she  passionately  espoused.  Meanwhile,  she  did  not  neglect,  nor 
suffer  to  rust,  the  bright  weapon  of  a  wit  which  embodied,  at 
times,  all  the  biting  energies  of  her  contempt.  To  insolence  she 
retorted  sarcasm;  and  early  able  to  see  that  society,  like  virtue, 
must  be  trampled  upon  in  order  to  yield  forth  its  incense,  she  rose 
into  respect  by  the  hauteur  of  her  manner,  the  bluntness  of  her 
satire,  the  independence  of  her  mind,  far  more  than  by  her 
various  accomplishments  and  her  unrivalled  beauty. 

Of  Lady  Erpingham  she  had  nothing  to  complain ;  kind,  easy, 
and  characterless,  her  protectress  sometimes  wounded  her  by  care- 
lessness, but  never  through  design  ;  on  the  contrary,  the  Countess 
at  once  loved  and  admired  her,  and  was  as  anxious  that  her  pro- 
tegee should  form  a  brilliant  alliance  as  if  she  had  been  her  own 
daughter.  Constance,  therefore,  loved  Lady  Erpingham  with 
sincere  and  earnest  warmth,  and  endeavored  to  forget  all  the 
commonplaces  and  littlenesses  which  made  up  the  mind  of  her 
protectress,  and  which,  otherwise,  would  have  been  precisely  of 
that  nature  to  which  one  like  Constance  would  have  been  the 
least  indulgent. 

CHAPTER  XI. 

CONVERSATION      BETWEEN     LADY     ERPINGHAM    AND    CONSTANCE 

FURTHER  PARTICULARS  OF  GO  DOLPHIN'S  FAMILY,  ETC. 

LADY  ERPINGHAM  was  a  widow ;  her  jointure,  for  she  had  been 
an  heiress  and  a  duke's  daughter,  was  large ;  and  the  noblest 
mansion  of  all  the  various  seats  possessed  by  the  wealthy  and 
powerful  house  of  Erpingham  had  been  allotted  by  her  late  lord 
for  her  widowed  residence.  Thither  she  went  punctually  on  the 
first  of  every  August,  and  quitted  it  punctually  on  the  eighth  of 
every  January. 

It  was  some  years  after  the  date  of  Godolphin's  departure  from 
England,  and  the  summer  following  the  spring  in  which  Cons- 
tance had  been  "brought  out";  and,  after  a  debut  of  such 
splendor  that  at  this  day  (many  years  subsequent  to  that  period) 


40  GODOLPHIN. 

the  sensation  she  created  is  not  only  a  matter  of  remembrance 
but  of  conversation,  Constance,  despite  the  triumph  of  her  vanity, 
was  not  displeased  to  seek  some  refuge,  even  from  admiration, 
among  the  shades  of  Wendover  Castle. 

"  When,"  said  she  one  morning,  as  she  was  walking  with  Lady 
Erpingham  upon  a  terrace  beneath  the  windows  of  the  castle, 
which  overlooked  the  country  for  miles  ;  "  When  will  you  go 
with  me,  dear  Lady  Erpingham,  to  see  those  ruins  of  which  I 
have  heard  so  much  and  so  often,  and  which  I  have  never  been 
able  to  persuade  you  to  visit  ?  Look !  The  day  is  so  clear  that 
we  can  see  their  outline  now — there,  to  the  right  of  that  church  ! 
They  cannot  be  so  very  far  from  Wendover. ' ' 

"Godolphin  Priory  is  about  twelve  miles  off,"  said  Lady 
Erpingham ;  "  but  it  may  seem  nearer,  for  it  is  situated  on  the 
highest  spot  of  the  county.  Poor  Arthur  Godolphin  !  He  is 
lately  dead  ! ' '  Lady  Erpingham  sighed. 

"  I  never  heard  you  speak  of  him  before." 

' '  There  might  be  a  reason  for  my  silence,  Constance.  He  was 
the  person,  of  all  whom  I  ever  saw,  who  appeared  to  me,  when 
I  was  your  age,  the  most  fascinating.  Not,  Constance,  that  I  was 
in  love  with  him,  or  that  he  gave  me  any  reason  to  become  so 
through  gratitude  for  any  affection  on  his  part.  It  was  a  girl's 
fancy,  idle  and  short-lived — nothing  more  !  " 

"  And  the  young  Godolphin — the  boy  who,  at  so  early  an  age, 
has  made  himself  known  for  his  eccentric  life  abroad?  " 

"  Is  his  son  ;  the  present  owner  of  those  ruins,  and,  I  fear,  of 
little  more,  unless  it  be  the  remains  of  a  legacy  received  from  a 
relation." 

' '  Was  the  father  extravagant,  then  ?  ' ' 

"Not  he  !  But  his  father  had  exceeded  a  patrimony  greatly 
involved,  and  greatly  reduced  from  its  ancient  importance.  All 
the  lands  we  see  yonder — those  villages,  those  woods — once  be- 
longed to  the  Godolphins.  They  were  the  most  ancient  and  the 
most  powerful  family  in  this  part  of  England ;  but  the  estates 
dwindled  away  with  each  successive  generation,  and  when  Arthur 
Godolphin,  my  Godolphin,  succeeded  to  the  property,  nothing 
was  left  for  him  but  the  choice  of  three  evils — a  profession, 
obscurity,  or  a  wealthy  marriage.  My  father,  who  had  long  des- 
tined me  for  Lord  Erpingham,  insinuated  that  it  was  in  me  that 
Mr.  Godolphin  wished  to  find  the  resource  I  have  last  mentioned, 
and  that  in  such  resource  was  my  only  attraction  in  his  eyes.  I 
have  some  reason  to  believe  he  proposed  to  the  Duke ;  but  he  was 
silent  to  me,  from  whom,  girl  as  I  was,  he  might  have  been  less 
Certain  of  refusal" 


GODOLPHIN.  41 

"What  did  he  at  last?  " 

"Married  a  lady  who  was  supposed  to  be  an  heiress;  but  he 
had  scarcely  enjoyed  her  fortune  a  year  before  it  became  the  sub- 
ject of  a  lawsuit.  He  lost  the  cause  and  the  dowry ;  and,  what 
was  worse,  the  expenses  of  litigation,  and  the  sums  he  was  obliged 
to  refund,  reduced  him  to  what,  for  a  man  of  his  rank,  might  be 
considered  absolute  poverty.  He  was  thoroughly  chagrined  and 
soured  by  this  event ;  retired  to  those  ruins,  or  rather  to  the  small 
cottage  that  adjoins  them,  and  there  lived  to  the  day  of  his  death, 
shunning  society,  and  certainly  not  exceeding  his  income." 

"  I  understand  you  :  he  became  parsimonious." 

"To  the  excess  which  his  neighbors  called  miserly." 

"And  his  wife?" 

"  Poor  woman  !  she  was  a  mere  fine  lady,  and  died,  I  believe, 
of  the  same  vexation  which  nipped,  not  the  life,  but  the  heart  of 
her  husband." 

"  Had  they  only  one  son  ?  " 

"Only  the  present  owner:  Percy,  I  think — yes,  Percy;  it  was 
his  mother's  surname — Percy  Godolphin." 

"And  how  came  this  poor  boy  to  be  thrown  so  early  on  the 
world?  Did  he  quarrel  with  Mr.  Godolphin?" 

" I  believe  not:  but  when  Percy  was  about  sixteen,  he  left  the 
obscure  school  at  which  he  was  educated,  and  resided  for  some 
little  time  with  a  relation,  Augustus  Saville.  He  stayed  with  him 
in  London  for  about  a  year,  and  went  everywhere  with  him, 
though  so  mere  a  boy.  His  manners  were,  I  well  remember,  as- 
sured and  formed.  A  relation  left  him  some  moderate  legacy, 
and  afterwards  he  went  abroad  alone." 

"But  the  ruins!  The  late  Mr.  Godolphin,  notwithstanding 
his  reserve,  did  not  object  to  indulging  the  curiosity  of  his  neigh- 
bors!" 

"  No :  he  was  proud  of  the  interest  the  ruins  of  his  hereditary 
mansion  so  generally  excited — proud  of  their  celebrity  in  print- 
shops  and  in  tours ;  but  he  himself  was  never  seen.  The  cottage 
in  which  he  lived,  though  it  adjoins  the  ruins,  was,  of  course, 
sacred  from  intrusion,  and  is  so  walled  in,  that  that  great  delight 
of  English  visitors  at  show-places — peeping-in  at  windows — was 
utterly  forbidden.  However  that  be,  during  Mr.  Godolphin's 
life,  I  never  had  courage  to  visit  what,  to  me,  would  have  been  a 
melancholy  scene  :  now,  the  pain  would  be  somewhat  less ;  and 
since  you  wish  it,  suppose  we  drive  over  and  visit  the  ruins  to- 
morrow. It  is  the  regular  day  for  seeing  them,  by  the  by." 

"  Jfot,  dear  Lady  Erpingham,  if  it  give  you  the  least — " 


42  GODOLPHIN. 

"  My  sweet  girl,"  interrupted  Lady  Erpingham,  when  a  ser- 
vant approached  to  announce  visitors  at  the  castle. 

"Will  you  go  into  the  saloon,  Constance?"  said  the  elder 
lady,  as,  thinking  still  of  love  and  Arthur  Godolphin,  she  took 
her  way  to  her  dressing-room  to  renovate  her  rouge. 

It  would  have  been  a  pretty  amusement  to  one  of  the  lesser 
devils,  if,  during  the  early  romance  of  Lady  Erpingham's  feel- 
ings towards  Arthur  Godolphin,  he  had  foretold  her  the  hour 
when  she  would  tell  how  Arthur  Godolphin  died  a  miser — just 
five  minutes  before  she  repaired  to  the  toilette  to  decorate  the 
cheek  of  age  for  the  heedless  eyes  of  a  common  acquaintance. 
'Tis  the  world's  way  !  For  my  part,  I  would  undertake  to  find  a 
better  world  in  that  rookery  opposite  my  windows. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

DESCRIPTION    OF   GODOLPHIN'S    HOUSE. — THE   FIRST   INTERVIEW. 

ITS    EFFECT   ON    CONSTANCE. 

"BUT,"  asked  Constance,  as,  the  next  day,  Lady  Erpingham 
and  herself  were  performing  the  appointed  pilgrimage  to  the  ruins 
of  Godolphin  Priory,  "if  the  late  Mr.  Godolphin,  as  he  grew  in 
years,  acquired  a  turn  of  mind  so  penurious,  was  he  not  enabled 
to  leave  his  son  some  addition  to  the  pied  de  terre  we  are  about 
to  visit?" 

"He  must  certainly  have  left  some  ready  money,"  answered 
Lady  Erpingham.  "But  is  it,  after  all,  likely  that  so  young  a 
man  as  Percy  Godolphin  could  have  lived  in  the  manner  he  has 
done  without  incurring  debts  ?  It  is  most  probable  that  he  had 
some  recourse  to  those  persons  so  willing  to  encourage  the  young 
and  extravagant,  and  that  repayment  to  them  will  more  than 
swallow  up  any  savings  his  father  might  have  amassed.  " 

"  True  enough  !  "  said  Constance  ;  and  the  conversation  glided 
into  remarks  on  avaricious  fathers  and  prodigal  sons.  Constance 
was  witty  on  the  subject,  and  Lady  Erpingham  laughed  herself 
into  excellent  humor. 

It  was  considerably  past  noon  when  they  arrived  at  the  ruins. 
The  carriage  stopped  before  a  small  inn,  at  the  entrance  of  a  dis- 
mantled park;  and,  taking  advantage  of  the  beauty  of  the 
day,  Lady  Erpingham  and  Constance  walked  slowly  towards  the 
remains  of  the  Priory. 

The  scene,  as  they  approached,  was  wild  and  picturesque  in 
the  extreme.  A  wide  and  glassy  lake  lay  stretched  beneath  them : 
on  the  opposite  side  stood  the  ruins,  The  large  oriel  wjndpw— * 


GODOLPHIN.  43 

the  Gothic  arch — the  broken,  yet  still  majestic  column,  all  em- 
browned and  mossed  with  age,  were  still  spared,  and  now  mir- 
rored themselves  in  the  waveless  and  silent  tide.  Fragments  of 
stone  lay  around,  for  some  considerable  distance,  and  the  whole 
was  backed  by  hills,  covered  with  gloomy  and  thick  woods  of 
pine  and  fir.  To  the  left,  they  saw  the  stream  which  fed  the 
lake,  stealing  away  through  grassy  banks,  overgrown  with  the 
willow  and  pollard  oak :  and  there,  from  one  or  two  cottages, 
only  caught  in  glimpses,  thin  wreaths  of  smoke  rose  in  spires 
against  the  clear  sky.  To  the  right,  the  ground  was  broken  into 
a  thousand  glens  and  hollows :  the  deer-loved  fern,  the  golden 
broom,  were  scattered  about  profusely ;  and  here  and  there  were 
dense  groves  of  pollards ;  or,  at  very  rare  intervals,  some  single 
tree  decaying  (for  all  round  bore  the  seal  of  vassalage  to  Time), 
but  mighty,  and  greenly  venerable  in  its  decay. 

As  they  passed  over  a  bridge  that,  on  either  side  of  the  stream, 
emerged,  as  it  were,  from  a  thick  copse,  they  caught  a  view  of 
the  small  abode  that  adjoined  the  ruins.  It  seemed  covered 
entirely  with  ivy;  and,  so  far  from  diminishing,  tended  rather  to 
increase  the  romantic  and  imposing  effect  of  the  crumbling  pile 
from  which  it  grew. 

They  opened  a  little  gate  at  the  other  extremity  of  the  bridge, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  more,  they  stood  at  the  entrance  to  the 
Priory. 

It  was  an  oak  door,  studded  with  nails.  The  jessamine  grew 
upon  either  side;  and,  to  descend  to  a  commonplace  matter,  they 
had  some  difficulty  in  finding  the  bell  among  the  leaves  in  which 
it  was  embedded.  When  they  had  found  and  touched  it,  its  clear 
and  lively  sound  rang  out  in  that  still  and  lovely,  though  deso- 
late spot,  with  an  effect  startling  and  impressive  from  its  contrast. 
There  is  something  very  fairylike  in  the  cheerful  voice  of  a  bell 
sounding  among  the  wilder  scenes  of  nature,  particularly  where 
Time  advances  his  claim  to  the  sovereignty  of  the  landscape  ;  for 
the  cheerfulness  is  a  little  ghostly,  and  might  serve  well  enough 
for  a  tocsin  to  the  elvish  hordes  whom  our  footsteps  may  be  sup- 
posed to  disturb. 

An  old  woman,  in  the  neat  peasant  dress  of  our  country,  when, 
taking  a  little  from  the  fashion  of  the  last  century  (the  cap  and 
the  kerchief),  it  assumes  no  ungraceful  costume,  replied  to  their 
summons.  She  was  the  solitary  cicerone  of  the  place.  She  had 
lived  there,  a  lone  and  childless  widow,  for  thirty  years ;  and,  of 
all  the  persons  I  have  ever  seen,  would  furnish  forth  the  best 
heroine  to  one  of  those  pictures  of  homely  life  which  Words- 
worth has  dignified  with  the  patriarchal  tenderness  of  his  genius, 


44  GODOLPHIN. 

They  wound  a  narrow  passage,  and  came  to  the  ruins  of  the 
great  hall.  Its  gothic  arches  still  sprang  lightly  upward  on 
either  side;  and,  opening  a  large  stone  box  that  stood  in  a  recess, 
the  old  woman  showed  them  the  gloves,  and  the  helmet,  and  the 
tattered  banners,  which  had  belonged  to  that  Godolphin  who  had 
fought  side  by  side  with  Sidney  when  he,  whose  life — as  the 
noblest  of  British  lyrists  hath  somewhere  said — was  ' '  poetry  put 
into  action,"*  received  his  death-wound  in  the  field  of  Zutphen. 

Thence  they  ascended,  by  the  dilapidated  and  crumbling  stair- 
case, to  a  small  room,  in  which  the  visitors  were  always  expected 
to  rest  themselves,  and  enjoy  the  scene  in  the  garden  below.  A 
large  chasm  yawned  where  the  casement  once  was :  and  round 
this  aperture  the  ivy  wreathed  itself  in  fantastic  luxuriance.  A 
sort  of  ladder,  suspended  from  this  chasm  to  the  ground,  afforded 
a  convenience  for  those  who  were  tempted  to  a  short  excursion  by 
the  view  without. 

And  the  view  -was  tempting !  A  smooth  green  lawn,  sur- 
rounded by  shrubs  and  flowers,  was  ornamented  in  the  centre  by 
a  fountain.  The  waters  were,  it  is  true,  dried  up  ;  but  the  basin, 
and  the  "  Triton  with  his  wreathed  shell,"  still  remained.  A 
little  to  the  right  was  an  old  monkish  sun-dial ;  and  through  the 
green  vista  you  caught  the  glimpse  of  one  of  those  gray,  grotesque 
statues  with  which  the  taste  of  Elizabeth's  day  shamed  the  classic 
chisel. 

There  was  something  quiet  and  venerable  about  the  whole 
place;  and  when  the  old  woman  said  to  Constance,  "Would  not 
you  like,  my  lady,  to  walk  down  and  look  at  the  sun-dial  and  the 
fountain?"  Constance  felt  she  required  nothing  more  to  yield  to 
her  inclination.  Lady  Erpingham,  less  adventurous,  remained 
in  the  ruined  chamber ;  and  the  old  woman,  naturally  enough, 
honored  the  elder  lady  with  her  company. 

Constance,  therefore,  descended  the  rude  steps  alone.  As  she 
paused  by  the  fountain,  an  indescribable  and  delicious  feeling  of 
repose  stole  over  a  mind  that  seldom  experienced  any  sentiment 
so  natural  or  so  soft.  The  hour,  the  stillness,  the  scene,  all  con- 
spired to  lull  the  heart  into  that  dreaming  and  half-unconscious 
revery  in  which  poets  would  suppose  the  hermits  of  elder  times  to 
have  wasted  a  life,  indolent,  and  yet  scarcely,  after  all,  unwise. 
"  Methinks,"  she  inly  soliloquized,  "  while  I  look  around,  I  feel 
as  if  I  could  give  up  my  objects  of  life  ;  renounce  my  hopes ;  for- 
get to  be  artificial  and  ambitious  :  live  in  these  ruins,  and  ' ' 
(whispered  the  spirit  within),  "loved  and  loving,  fulfil  the  ordi- 
nary doom  of  woman," 


GODOLPHIN.  45 

Indulging  a  mood,  which  the  proud  and  restless  Constance, 
who  despised  love  as  the  poorest  of  human  weaknesses,  though 
easily  susceptible  to  all  other  species  of  romance,  had  scarcely 
ever  known  before,  she  wandered  away  from  the  lawn  into  one  of 
the  alleys  cut  amidst  the  grove  around.  Caught  by  the  murmur 
of  an  unseen  brook,  she  tracked  it  through  the  trees,  as  its  sound 
grew  louder  and  louder  on  her  ear,  till  at  length  it  stole  upon  her 
sight.  The  sun,  only  winning  through  the  trees  at  intervals, 
played  capriciously  upon  the  cold  and  dark  waters  as  they  glided 
on,  and  gave  to  her,  as  the  same  effect  has  done  to  a  thousand 
poets,  ample  matter  for  a  simile  or  a  moral. 

She  approached  the  brook,  and  came  unawares  upon  the  figure 
of  a  young  man,  leaning  against  a  stunted  tree  that  overhung  the 
waters,  and  occupied  with  the  idle  amusement  of  dropping  peb- 
bles in  the  stream.  She  saw  only  his  profile ;  but  that  view  is, 
in  a  fine  countenance,  almost  always  the  most  striking  and 
impressive,  and  it  was  eminently  so  in  the  face  before  her.  The 
stranger,  who  was  scarcely  removed  from  boyhood,  was  dressed 
in  deep  mourning.  He  seemed  slight,  and  small  of  stature.  A 
travelling  cap  of  sables  contrasted,  not  hid,  light  brown  hair  of 
singular  richness  and  beauty.  His  features  were  of  that  pure  and 
severe  Greek  of  which  the  only  fault  is,  that  in  the  very  perfec- 
tion of  the  chiselling  of  the  features  there  seems  something  hard 
and  stern.  The  complexion  was  pale,  even  to  wanness;  and  the 
whole  cast  and  contour  of  the  head  were  full  of  intellect,  and 
betokening  that  absorption  of  mind  which  cannot  be  marked  in 
any  one  without  exciting  a  certain  vague  curiosity  and  interest. 

So  dark  and  wondrous  are  the  workings  of  our  nature,  that 
there  are  scarcely  any  of  us,  however  light  and  unthinking,  who 
would  not  be  arrested  by  the  countenance  of  one  in  deep  reflec- 
tion ;  who  would  not  pause,  and  long  to  pierce  into  the  mysteries 
that  were  agitating  that  world,  most  illimitable  by  nature,  but 
often  most  narrowed  by  custom — the  world  within. 

And  this  interest,  powerful  as  it  is,  spelled  and  arrested  Con- 
stance at  once.  She  remained  for  a  minute  gazing  on  the  coun- 
tenance of  the  young  stranger,  and  then  she — the  most  self-pos- 
sessed and  stately  of  human  creatures — blushing  deeply,  and 
confused  though  unseen,  turned  lightly  away  and  stopped  not  on 
her  road  till  she  regained  the  old  chamber  and  Lady  Erpingham. 

The  old  woman  was  descanting  upon  the  merits  of  the  late  lord 
of  Godolphin  Priory  : 

"  For  though  they  called  him  close,  and  so  forth,  my  lady,  yet 
he  was  generous  to  others  :  it  was  only  himself  he  pinched.  But, 
\g  be  gqre,  the  present  squire  won't  take  after  him  there," 


46  GODOLPHIN. 

"Has  Mr.  Percy  Godolphin  been  here  lately ?"  asked  Lady 
Erpingham. 

"  He  is  at  the  cottage  now,  my  lady,"  replied  the  old  woman. 
"  He  came  two  days  ago." 

"Is  he  like  his  father?" 

"Oh  !  Not  near  so  fine-looking  a  gentleman  !  Much  smaller, 
and  quite  pale-like.  He  seems  sickly :  them  foreign  parts  do 
nobody  no  good.  He  was  as  fine  a  lad  at  sixteen  years  old  as 
ever  I  seed ;  but  now  he  is  not  like  the  same  thing." 

So  then  it  was  evidently  Percy  Godolphin  whom  Constance 
had  seen  by  the  brook — the  owner  of  a  home  without  coffers, 
and  estates  without  a  rent-roll :  the  Percy  Godolphin,  of  whom 
before  he  had  attained  the  age  when  others  have  left  the  college, 
or  even  the  school,  every  one  had  learned  to  speak — some  favor- 
ably, all  with  eagerness.  Constance  felt  a  vague  interest  respect- 
ing him  spring  up  in  her  mind ;  she  checked  it,  for  it  was  a  sin 
in  her  eyes  to  think  with  interest  on  a  man  neither  rich  nor 
powerful ;  and  as  she  quitted  the  ruins  with  Lady  Erpingham, 
she  communicated  to  the  latter  her  adventure.  She  was,  however, 
disingenuous ;  for  though  Godolphin's  countenance  was  exactly 
of  that  cast  which  Constance  most  admired,  she  described  him 
just  as  the  old  woman  had  done ;  and  Lady  Erpingham  figured 
to  herself,  from  the  description,  a  little  yellow  man,  with  white 
hair  and  a  turned-up  nose.  Oh  Truth !  what  a  hard  path  is 
thine  !  Does  any  keep  it  for  three  inches  together  in  the  com- 
monest trifle?  And  yet  two  sides  of  my  library  are  filled  with 
histories  ! 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

A  BALL  ANNOUNCED. — GODOLPHIN'S  VISIT  TO  WENDOVER  CASTLE. — 
HIS  MANNERS  AND  CONVERSATION. 

LADY  ERPINGHAM  (besides  her  daughter,  Lady  Eleanor,  mar- 
ried to  Mr.  Clare,  a  county  member,  of  large  fortune)  was  blessed 
with  one  son. 

The  present  Earl  had  been  for  the  last  two  years  abroad.  He 
had  never,  since  his  accession  to  his  title,  visited  Wendover  Cas- 
tle ;  and  Lady  Erpingham  one  morning  experienced  the  delight 
of  receiving  a  letter  from  him,  dated  Dover,  and  signifying  his 
intention  of  paying  her  a  visit.  In  honor  of  this  event  Lady 
Erpingham  resolved  to  give  a  grand  ball.  Cards  were  issued  to 
all  the  families  in  the  county ;  and,  among  others,  to  Mr.  Godol- 
phin, 


GODOLPHIN.  47 

On  the  third  day  after  this  invitation  had  been  sent  to  the  per- 
son I  have  last  named,  as  Lady  Erpingham  and  Constance  were 
alone  in  the  saloon,  Mr.  Percy  Godolphin  was  announced.  Con- 
stance blushed  as  she  looked  up,  and  Lady  Erpingham  was 
struck  by  the  nobleness  of  his  address,  and  the  perfect  self-pos- 
session of  his  manner.  And  yet  nothing  could  be  so  different  as 
was  his  deportment  from  that  which  she  had  been  accustomed  to 
admire,  from  that  manifested  by  the  exquisites  of  the  day.  The 
calm,  the  nonchalance,  the  artificial  smile  of  languor,  the  even- 
ness, so  insipid,  yet  so  irreproachable,  of  English  manners  when 
considered  most  polished — all  this  was  the  reverse  of  Godolphin's 
address  and  air.  In  short,  in  all  he  said  or  did  there  was  some- 
thing foreign,  something  unfamiliar.  He  was  abrupt  and  enthus- 
iastic in  conversation,  and  used  gestures  in  speaking.  His  coun- 
tenance lighted  up  at  every  word  that  broke  from  him  on  the 
graver  subjects  of  discusson.  You  felt,  indeed,  with  him,  that 
you  were  with  a  man  of  genius — a  wayward  and  a  spoiled  man, 
who  had  acquired  his  habits  in  solitude,  but  his  graces  in  the 
world. 

They  conversed  about  the  ruins  of  the  Priory,  and  Constance 
expressed  her  admiration  of  their  romantic  and  picturesque  beauty. 
"Ah  !  "  said  he,  smiling,  but  with  a  slight  blush,  in  which  Con- 
stance detected  something  of  pain  ;  "I  heard  of  your  visit  to  my 
poor  heaps  of  stone.  My  father  took  great  pleasure  in  the  notice 
they  attracted.  When  a  proud  man  has  not  riches  to  be  proud 
of,  he  grows  proud  of  the  signs  of  his  poverty  itself.  This  was  the 
case  with  my  poor  father.  Had  he  been  rich,  the  ruins  would 
not  have  existed  :  he  would  have  rebuilt  the  old  mansion.  As  he 
was  poor,  he  valued  himself  on  their  existence,  and  fancied  mag- 
nificence in  every  handful  of  moss.  But  all  life  is  delusion  :  all 
pride,  all  vanity,  all  pomp,  are  equally  deceit.  Like  the  Spanish 
hidalgo,  we  put  on  spectacles  when  we  eat  our  cherries,  in  order 
that  they  may  seem  ten  times  as  big  as  they  are  !  " 

Constance  smiled  ;  and  Lady  Erpingham,  who  had  more  kind- 
ness than  delicacy,  continued  her  praises  of  the  Priory  and  the 
scenery  round  it. 

"The  old  park,"  said  she,  "with  its  wood  and  water,  is  so 
beautiful !  It  wants  nothing  but  a  few  deer,  just  tame  enough  to 
come  near  the  ruins,  and  wild  enough  to  start  away  as  you 
approach." 

"Now  you  would  borrow  an  attraction  from  wealth,"  said 
Godolphin,  who,  unlike  English  persons  in  general,  seemed  to 
love  alluding  to  his  poverty  :  "  it  is  not  for  the  owner  of  a  ruined 
Priory  to  consult  the  aristocratic  enchantments  of  that  costly 


48  GODOLPHIN. 

luxury,  the  Picturesque.  Alas  !  I  have  not  even  wherewithal  to 
feed  a  few  solitary  partridges ;  and  I  hear,  that  if  I  go  beyond  the 
green  turf,  once  a  park,  I  shall  be  warned  off  forthwith,  and  my 
very  qualification  disputed." 

"  Are  you  fond  of  shooting  ?  "  said  Lady  Erpingham. 

"  I  fancy  I  should  be ;  but  I  have  never  enjoyed  the  sport  in 
England." 

"Do  pray  come,  then,"  said  Lady  Erpingham,  kindly,  "and 
spend  your  first  week  in  September  here.  Let  me  see :  the  first 
of  the  month  will  be  next  Thursday  ;  dine  with  us  on  Wednesday. 
We  have  keepers  and  dogs  here  enough,  thanks  to  Robert ;  so 
you  need  only  bring  your  gun." 

"  You  are  very  kind,  dear  Lady  Erpingham,"  said  Godolphin 
warmly ;  "I  accept  your  invitation  at  once." 

"Your  father  was  a  very  old  friend  of  mine,"  said  the  lady, 
with  a  sigh. 

"  He  was  an  old  admirer,"  said  the  gentleman,  with  a  bow. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

CONVERSATION    BETWEEN    GODOLPHIN    AND  CONSTANCE. THE 

COUNTRY    LIFE  AND  THE  TOWN  LIFE. 

AND  Godolphin  came  on  the  appointed  Wednesday.  He  was 
animated  that  day  even  to  brilliancy.  Lady  Erpingham  thought 
him  the  most  charming  of  men  ;  and  even  Constance  forgot  that 
he  was  no  match  for  herself.  Gifted  and  cultivated  as  she  was,  it 
was  not  without  delight  that  she  listened  to  his  glowing  descrip- 
tions of  scenery,  and  to  his  playful,  yet  somewhat  melancholy 
strain  of  irony  upon  men  and  their  pursuits.  The  peculiar  feat 
ures  of  her  mind  made  her,  indeed,  like  the  latter  more  than  she 
could  appreciate  the  former;  for  in  her  nature  there  was  more 
bitterness  than  sentiment.  Still,  his  rich  language  and  fluent 
periods,  even  in  description,  touched  her  ear  and  fancy,  though 
they  sank  not  to  her  heart;  and  she  yielded  insensibly  to  the 
spells  she  would  almost  have  despised  in  another. 

The  next  day  Constance,  who  was  no  very  early  riser,  tempted 
by  the  beauty  of  the  noon,  strolled  into  the  gardens.  She  was  sur- 
prised to  hear  Godolphin's  voice  behind  her :  she  turned  round, 
and  he  joined  her. 

"I  thought  you  were  on  your  shooting  expedition  ?  " 

"  I  have  been  shooting,  and  I  am  returned.  I  was  out  by  day- 
break, and  I  came  back  at  noon  in  the  hope  of  being  allowed  to 
join  you  in  your  ride  or  walk." 


GODOLPHIN.  4Q 

Constance  smilingly  acknowledged  the  compliment;  and  as 
they  passed  up  the  straight  walks  of  the  old-fashioned  and  stately 
gardens,  Godolphin  turned  the  conversation  upon  the  varieties  of 
garden  scenery ;  upon  the  poets  who  have  described  those  varie- 
ties best;  upon  that  difference  between  the  town  life  and  the 
country,  on  which  the  brothers  of  the  minstrel  craft  have,  in  all 
ages,  so  glowingly  insisted.  In  this  conversation,  certain  points 
of  contrast  between  the  characters  of  these  two  young  persons  might 
be  observed. 

"I  confess  to  you,"  said  Godolphin,  "  that  I  have  little  faith 
in  the  permanence  of  any  attachment  professed  for  the  country  by 
the  inhabitants  of  cities.  If  we  can  occupy  our  minds  solely  with 
the  objects  around  us ;  if  the  book,  and  the  old  tree,  and  the 
golden  sunset,  and  the  summer  night,  and  the  animal  and  homely 
life  that  we  survey, — if  these  can  fill  our  contemplation,  and  take 
away  from  us  the  feverish  schemes  of  the  future — then  indeed  I  can 
fully  understand  the  reality  of  that  tranquil  and  happy  state  which 
our  elder  poets  have  described  as  incident  to  a  country  life.  But 
if  we  carry  with  us  to  the  shade  all  the  restless  and  perturbed 
desires  of  the  city ;  if  we  only  employ  present  leisure  in  schemes 
for  an  agitated  future — then  it  is  in  vain  that  we  affect  the  hermit, 
and  fly  to  the  retreat.  The  moment  the  novelty  of  green  fields  is 
over,  and  our  projects  are  formed,  we  wish  to  hurry  to  the  city  to 
execute  them.  We  have,  in  a  word,  made  our  retirement  only  a 
nursery  for  schemes  now  springing  up,  and  requiring  to  be  trans- 
planted." 

"You  are  right,"  said  Constance,  quickly;  "and  who  would 
pass  life  as  if  it  were  a  dream?  It  seems  to  me  that  we  put  retire- 
ment to  the  right  use  when  we  make  it  only  subservient  to  our 
aims  in  the  world." 

"  A  strange  doctrine  for  a  young  beauty,"  thought  Godolphir^ 
"whose  head  ought  to  be  full  of  groves  and  love."  "Then," 
said  he  aloud,  "I  must  rank  among  those  who  abuse  the  pur- 
poses of  retirement;  for  I  have  hitherto  been  flattered  to  think 
that  I  enjoy  it  for  itself.  Despite  the  artificial  life  I  have  led, 
everything  that  speaks  of  nature  has  a  voice  that  I  can  rarely 
resist.  What  feelings  created  in  a  city  can  compare  with  those 
that  rise  so  gently  and  so  unbidden  within  us  when  the  trees  and 
the  waters  are  our  only  companions — our  only  sources  of  excite- 
ment and  intoxication  ?  Is  not  contemplation  better  than  ambi- 
tion?" 

"Can  you  believe  it?"  said  Constance,  incredulously. 

"I  do." 

Constance  smiled ;    and  there  would  have  been  contempt  in 

4 


56  GODOLPHIN. 

that  beautiful  smile,  had  not  Godolphin  interested  her  in  spite  of 
herself. 

CHAPTER  XV. 

THE  FEELINGS  OF  CONSTANCE  AND  GODOLPHIN  TOWARDS  EACH 
OTHER. — THE  DISTINCTION  IN  THEIR  CHARACTERS. — REMARKS 
ON  THE  EFFECTS  PRODUCED  BY  THE  WORLD  UPON  GODOLPHIN. — 
THE  RIDE. — RURAL  DESCRIPTIONS. — OMENS. — THE  FIRST  INDIS- 
TINCT CONFESSION. 

EVERY  day,  at  the  hour  in  which  Constance  was  visible,  Godol- 
phin had  loaded  the  keeper,  and  had  returned  to  attend  upon  her 
movements.  They  .walked  and  rode  together ;  and  in  the  even- 
ing, Godolphin  hung  over  her  chair,  and  listened  to  her  songs ; 
for  though,  as  I  have  before  said,  she  had  but  little  science  in 
instrumental  music,  her  voice  was  rich  and  soft  beyond  the  pathos 
of  ordinary  singers. 

Lady  Erpingham  saw,  with  secret  delight,  what  she  believed 
to  be  a  growing  attachment.  She  loved  Constance  for  herself, 
and  Godolphin  for  his  father's  memory.  She  thought  again  and 
again  what  a  charming  couple  they  would  make — so  handsome, 
so  gifted  :  and  if  Prudence  whispered  also,  so  poor,  the  kind 
Countess  remembered  that  she  herself  had  saved  from  her  ample 
jointure  a  sum  which  she  had  always  designed  as  a  dowry  for 
Constance,  and  which,  should  Godolphin  be  the  bridegroom,  she 
felt  she  should  have  a  tenfold  pleasure  in  bestowing.  With  this 
fortune,  which  would  place  them,  at  least,  in  independence,  she 
united  in  her  kindly  imagination  the  importance  which  she 
imagined  Godolphin's  talents  must  ultimately  acquire;  and  for 
which,  in  her  aristocratic  estimation,  she  conceived  the  senate 
the  only  legitimate  sphere.  She  said,  she  hinted,  nothing  to 
Constance ;  but  she  suffered  nature,  youth,  and  companionship 
to  exercise  their  sway. 

And  the  complexion  of  Godolphin's  feelings  for  Constance 
Vernon  did  indeed  resemble  love — was  love  itself,  though  rather 
love  in  its  romance  than  its  reality.  What  were  those  of  Con- 
stance for  him?  She  knew  not  herself  at  that  time.  Had  she 
been  of  a  character  one  shade  less  ambitious,  or  less  powerful, 
they  would  have  been  love,  and  love  of  no  common  character. 
But  within  her  musing,  and  self-possessed,  and  singularly  consti- 
tuted mind,  there  was,  as  yet,  a  limit  to  every  sentiment,  a  chain 
to  the  wings  of  every  thought,  save  those  of  one  order ;  and  that 
order  was  not  of  love.  There  was  a  marked  difference,  in  all 


GODOLPHIN.  5 1 

respects,  between  the  characters  of  the  two;  and  it  was  singular 
enough,  that  that  of  the  woman  was  the  less  romantic,  and  com- 
posed of  the  simpler  materials. 

A  volume  of  Wordsworth's  most  exquisite  poetry  had  then  just 
appeared.  "Is  not  this  wonderful?"  said  Godolphin,  reciting 
some  of  those  lofty,  but  refining  thoughts  which  characterize  the 
Pastor  of  modern  poets. 

Constance  shook  her  head. 

"  What !  you  do  not  admire  it?" 

"I  do  not  understand  it." 

"  What  poetry  do  you  admire?  " 

"This." 

It  was  Pope's  translation  of  the  "  Iliad." 

"Yes,  yes,  to  be  sure,"  said  Godolphin,  a  little  vexed;  "we 
all  admire  this  in  its  way :  but  what  else  ?  " 

Constance  pointed  to  a  passage  in  the  "  Palamon  and  Arcite" 
of  Dryden. 

Godolphin  threw  down  his  Wordsworth.  "You  take  an  un- 
generous advantage  of  me,"  said  he.  "Tell  me  something  you 
admire,  which,  at  least,  I  may  have  the  privilege  of  disputing; 
something  that  you  think  generally  neglected." 

"  I  admire  few  things  that  are  generally  neglected,"  answered 
Constance,  with  her  bright  and  proud  smile.  "  Fame  gives  its 
stamp  to  all  metal  that  is  of  intrinsic  value." 

This  answer  was  quite  characteristic  of  Constance :  she  wor- 
shipped fame  far  more  than  the  genius  which  won  it. 

"Well,  then,"  said  Godolphin,  "let  us  see  now  if  we  can 
come  to  a  compromise  of  sentiment" ;  and  he  took  up  the 
"Comus"  of  Milton. 

No  one  read  poetry  so  beautifully  :  his  voice  was  so  deep  and 
flexible ;  and  his  countenance  answered  so  well  to  every  modula- 
tion of  his  voice  Constance  was  touched  by  the  reader,  but  not 
by  the  verse.  Godolphin  had  great  penetration ;  he  perceived  it, 
and  turned  to  the  speeches  of  Satan  in  "  Paradise  Lost."  The 
ncble  countenance  before  him  grew  luminous  at  once :  the  lip 
quivered,  the  eye  sparkled ;  the  enthusiasm  of  Godolphin  was  not 
comparable  to  that  of  Constance.  The  fact  was,  that  the  broad 
and  common  emotions  of  the  intellectual  character  struck  upon 
the  right  key.  Courage,  defiance,  ambition,  these  she  compre- 
hended to  their  fullest  extent ;  but  the  rich  subtleties  of  thought 
which  mark  the  cold  and  bright  page  of  the  "  Comus ";  the 
noble  Platonism,  the  high  and  rare  love  for  what  is  abstractedly 
good,  these  were  not  "sonorous  and  trumpet-speaking"  enough 


52  GODOLPHIN. 

for  the  heart  of  one  meant  by  Nature  for  a  heroine  or  a  queen, 
not  a  poetess  or  a  philosopher. 

But  all  that  in  literature  was  delicate,  and  half-seen,  and 
abstruse,  had  its  peculiar  charm  for  Godolphin.  Of  a  reflective 
and  refining  mind,  he  had  early  learned  to  despise  the  common 
emotions  of  men :  glory  touched  him  not,  and  to  ambition  he 
had  shut  his  heart.  Love,  with  him — even  though  he  had  been 
deemed,  nor  unjustly,  a  man  of  gallantry  and  pleasure — love  was 
not  compounded  of  the  ordinary  elements  of  the  passions.  Full 
of  dreams,  and  refinements,  and  intense  abstractions,  it  was  a 
love  that  seemed  not  homely  enough  for  endurance,  and  of  too 
rare  a  nature  to  hope  for  sympathy  in  return. 

And  so  it  was  in  his  intercourse  with  Constance ;  both  were 
continually  disappointed.  "You  do  not  feel  this,"  said  Con- 
stance. "She  cannot  understand  me,"  sighed  Godolphin. 

But  we  must  not  suppose — despite  his  refinements,  and  his  rev- 
eries, and  his  love  for  the  intellectual  and  the  pure — that  Godol- 
phin was  of  a  stainless  character  or  mind.  He  was  one  who, 
naturally  full  of  decided  and  marked  qualities,  was,  by  the  pecu- 
liar elements  of  our  society,  rendered  a  doubtful,  motley,  and 
indistinct  character,  tinctured  by  the  frailties  that  leave  us  in  a 
wavering  state  between  vice  and  virtue.  The  energies  that  had 
marked  his  boyhood  were  dulled  and  crippled  in  the  indolent  life 
of  the  world.  His  wandering  habits  for  the  last  few  years — the 
soft  and  poetical  existence  of  the  South — had  fed  his  natural 
romance,  and  nourished  that  passion  for  contemplation  which 
the  intellectual  man  of  pleasure  so  commonly  forms ;  for  pleasure 
has  a  philosophy  of  its  own ;  a  sad,  a  fanciful,  yet  deep  persua- 
sion of  the  vanity  of  all  things ;  a  craving  after  the  bright  ideal — 

"  The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star." 

Solomon's  thirst  for  pleasure  was  the  companion  of  his  wis- 
dom :  satiety  was  the  offspring  of  the  one,  discontent  of  the  other. 
But  this  philosophy,  though  seductive,  is  of  no  wholesome  nor 
useful  character ;  it  is  the  philosophy  of  feelings,  not  principles ; 
of  the  heart,  not  head.  So  with  Godolphin :  he  was  too  refined 
in  his  moralizing  to  cling  to  what  was  moral.  The  simply  good 
and  the  simply  bad  he  left  for  us  plain  folks  to  discover.  He  was 
unattracted  by  the  doctrines  of  right  and  wrong  which  serve  for 
all  men ;  but  he  had  some  obscure  and  shadowy  standard  in  his 
own  mind  by  which  he  compared  the  actions  of  others.  He  had 
imagination,  genius,  even  heart ;  was  brilliant  always,  sometimes 
profound ;  graceful  in  society,  yet  seldom  social :  a  lonely  man, 


GODOLPHIN.  53 

yet  a  man  of  the  world ;  generous  to  individuals,  selfish  to  the 
mass.  How  many  fine  qualities  worse  than  thrown  away  ! 

Who  will  not  allow  that  he  has  met  many  such  men  ?  And  who 
will  not  follow  this  man  to  his  end  ? 

One  day  (it  was  the  last  of  Godolphin's  protracted  visit),  as 
the  sun  was  waning  to  its  close,  and  the  time  was  unusually  soft 
and  tranquil,  Constance  and  Godolphin  were  returning  slowly 
home  from  their  customary  ride.  They  passed  by  a  small  inn, 
bearing  the  common  sign  of  the  "Chequers,"  round  which  a 
crowd  of  peasants  were  assembled,  listening  to  the  rude  music 
which  a  wandering  Italian  boy  drew  from  his  guitar.  The  scene 
was  rustic  and  picturesque;  and  as  Godolphin  reined  in  his  horse 
and  gazed  on  the  group,  he  little  dreamed  of  the  fierce  and  dark 
emotions  with  which,  at  a  far  distant  period,  he  was  destined  to 
revisit  that  spot. 

"Our  peasants,"  said  he,  as  they  rode  on,  "require  some 
humanizing  relaxation  like  that  we  have  witnessed.  The  music 
and  the  morris-dance  have  gone  from  England ;  and  instead  of 
providing,  as  formerly,  for  the  amusement  of  the  grinded  laborer, 
our  legislators  now  regard  with  the  most  watchful  jealousy  his 
most  distant  approach  to  festivity.  They  cannot  bear  the  rustic 
to  be  merry :  disorder  and  amusements  are  words  for  the  same 
offence." 

"I  doubt,"  said  the  earnest  Constance,  "  whether  the  legisla- 
tors are  not  right.  For  men  given  to  amusement  are  easily  en- 
slaved. All  noble  thoughts  are  grave." 

Thus  talking,  they  passed  a  shallow  ford  in  the  stream.  "  We 
are  not  far  from  the  Priory,  "said  Godolphin,  pointing  to  its  ruins, 
that  rose  grayly  in  the  evening  skies  from  the  green  woods  around 
it. 

Constance  sighed  involuntarily.  She  felt  pain  in  being  remind- 
ed of  the  slender  fortunes  of  her  companion.  Ascending  the  gen- 
tle hill  that  swelled  from  the  stream,  she  now,  to  turn  the  current 
of  her  thoughts,  pointed  admiringly  to  the  blue  course  of  the 
waters,  as  they  wound  through  their  shagged  banks.  And  deep, 
dark,  rushing,  even  at  that  still  hour,  went  the  stream  through 
the  boughs  that  swept  over  its  surface.  Here  and  there  the  banks 
suddenly  shelved  down,  mingling  with  the  waves ;  then  abruptly 
they  rose,  overspread  with  thick  and  tangled  umbrage,  several 
feet  above  the  level  of  the  river. 

"  How  strange  it  is,"  said  Godolphin,  "  that  at  times  a  feeling 
comes  over,  as  we  gaze  upon  certain  places,  which  associates  the 
scene  either  with  some  dim-remembered  and  dream-like  images  of 
the  Past,  or  with  a  prophetic  and  fearful  omen  of  the  Future.  As 


54  GODOLPHIN. 

I  gaze  now  upon  the  spot — those  banks,  that  whirling  river — it 
seems  as  if  my  destiny  claimed  a  mysterious  sympathy  with  the 
scene:  when — how — wherefore — I  know  not — guess  not:  only 
this  shadowy  and  chilling  sentiment  unaccountably  creeps  over 
me.  Every  one  has  known  a  similar  strange,  indistinct  feeling  at 
certain  times  and  places,  and  with  a  similar  inability  to  trace  the 
cause.  And  yet,  is  it  not  singular  that  in  poetry,  which  wears 
most  feelings  to  an  echo,  I  have  never  met  with  any  attempt  to 
describe  it?  " 

"Because  poetry,"  said  Constance,  "is,  after  all,  but  a  hack- 
neyed imitation  of  the  most  common  thoughts,  giving  them  mere- 
ly a  gloss  by  the  brilliancy  of  verse.  And  yet  how  little  poets 
know !  They  imagine,  and  they  imitate — behold  all  their 
secrets !  " 

"  Perhaps  you  are  right,"  said  Godolphin,  musingly;  "  and  I, 
who  have  often  vainly  fancied  I  had  the  poetical  temperament, 
have  been  so  chilled  and  sickened  by  the  characteristics  of  the 
tribe,  that  I  have  checked  its  impulses  with  a  sort  of  disdain  ;and 
thus  the  Ideal,  having  no  vent  in  me,  preys  within,  creating  a 
thousand  undefined  dreams  and  unwilling  superstitions,  making 
me  enamoured  of  the  Shadowy  and  Unknown,  and  dissatisfying 
me  with  the  petty  ambitions  of  the  world." 

"You  will  awake  hereafter,"  said  Constance,  earnestly. 

Godolphin  shook  his  head,  and  replied  not. 

Their  way  now  lay  along  a  green  lane  that  gradually  wound 
round  a  hill  commanding  a  view  of  great  richness  and  beauty. 
Cottages,  and  spires,  and  groves,  gave  life — but  it  was  scattered 
and  remote  life — to  the  scene ;  and  the  broad  stream,  whose 
waves,  softened  in  the  distance,  did  not  seem  to  break  the  even 
surface  of  the  tide,  flowed  onward,  glowing  in  the  sunlight,  till  it 
was  lost  among  dark  and  luxuriant  woods. 

Both  once  more  arrested  their  horses  by  a  common  impulse,  and 
both  became  suddenly  silent  as  they  gazed.  Godolphin  was  the 
first  to  speak  :  it  brought  to  his  memory  a  scene  in  that  delicious 
land,  whose  Southern  loveliness  Claude  has  transferred  to  the  can- 
vas, and  De  Stae'l  to  the  page.  With  his  own  impassioned  and 
earnest  language  he  spoke  to  Constance  of  that  scene  and  that 
country.  Every  tree  before  him  furnished  matter  for  his  illustra- 
tion or  his  contrast ;  and,  as  she  heard  that  magic  voice,  and 
speaking  too,  of  a  country  dedicated  to  love,  Constance  listened 
with  glistening  eyes,  and  a  cheek  which  he — consummate  master 
of  the  secrets  of  womanhood — perceived  was  eloquent  with 
thoughts  which  she  knew  not,  but  which  he  interpreted  to  the 
letter. 


GODOLPHIN.  55 

"And  in  such  a  spot,"  said  he,  continuing,  and  fixing  his  deep 
and  animated  gaze  on  her;  "In  such  a  spot  I  could  have  stayed 
forever  but  for  one  recollection,  one  feeling — I  should  have  been 
too  much  alone  !  In  a  wild,  or  a  grand,  or  even  a  barren  country, 
we  may  live  in  solitude,  and  find  fit  food  for  thought ;  but  not  in 
one  so  soft,  so  subduing,  as  that  which  I  saw  and  see.  Love  comes 
over  us  then  in  spite  of  ourselves;  and  I  feel — I  feel  now — " 
his  voice  trembled  as  he  spoke — "  that  any  secret  we  may  before 
have  nursed,  though  hitherto  unacknowledged,  makes  itself  at 
length  a  voice.  We  are  oppressed  with  the  desire  to  be  loved ; 
we  long  for  the  courage  to  say  we  love." 

Never  before  had  Godolphin,  though  constantly  verging  into 
sentiment,  spoken  to  Constance  in  so  plain  a  language.  Eye, 
voice,  cheek — all  spoke.  She  felt  that  he  had  confessed  he  loved 
her  !  And  was  she  not  happy  at  that  thought  ?  She  was  :  it  was 
her  happiest  moment.  But,  in  that  sort  of  vague  and  indistinct 
shrinking  from  the  subject  with  which  a  woman  who  loves  hears 
a  disclosure  of  love  from  him  on  whose  lips  it  is  most  sweet,  she 
muttered  some  confused  attempt  to  change  the  subject,  and 
quickened  her  horse's  pace.  Godolphin  did  not  renew  the  topic 
so  interesting  and  so  dangerous ;  only,  as  with  the  winding  of 
the  road  the  landscape  gradually  faded  from  their  view,  he  said, 
in  a  low  voice,  as  if  to  himself:  "How  long,  how  fondly,  shall 
I  remember  this  day  !  " 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

GODOLPHIN 'S  RETURN  HOME. — HIS  SOLILOQUY. — LORD  ERPINGHAIS  's 
ARRIVAL  AT  WENDOVER  CASTLE. — THE  EARL  DESCRIBED. — HI.S 
ACCOUNT  OF  GODOLPHIN'S  LIFE  AT  ROME. 

WITH  a  listless  step  Godolphin  re-entered  the  threshold  of  his 
cottage  home.  He  passed  into  a  small  chamber,  which  was  yet 
the  largest  in  his  house.  The  poor  and  scanty  furniture  scattered 
around ;  the  old,  tuneless,  broken  harpsichord  ;  the  worn  and  tat- 
tered carpet ;  the  tenantless  birdcage  in  the  recess  by  the  win- 
dow ;  the  book-shelves,  containing  some  dozens  of  worthless  vol- 
umes; the  sofa  of  the  last  century  (when,  if  people  knew  comfort, 
they  placed  it  not  in  lounging),  small,  narrow,  highbacked,  hard, 
and  knotted  :  these,  just  as  his  father  had  left,  just  as  his  boyhood 
had  seen,  them,  greeted  him  with  a  comfortless  and  chill,  though 
familiar,  welcome.  It  was  evening :  he  ordered  a  fire  and  lights^; 
and,  leaning  his  face  on  his  hand  as  he  contemplated  the  fitful 
and  dusky  outbreakings  of  the  flame  through  the  bars  of  the  nig- 


56  GODOLPHIN. 

gard  and  contracted  grate,  he  sat  himself  down  to  hold  commune 
with  his  heart. 

"So,  I  love  this  woman,"  said  he,  "do  I?  Have  I  not 
deceived  myself  ?  She  is  poor — no  connection  ;  she  has  nothing 
whereby  to  reinstate  my  house's  fortunes,  to  rebuild  this  mansion, 
or  repurchase  yonder  demesnes.  I  love  her  !  /,  who  have  known 
the  value  of  her  sex  so  well,  that  I  have  said,  again  and  again, 
I  would  not  shackle  life  with  a  princess !  Love  may  withstand 
possession — true — but  not  time.  In  three  years  there  would  be  no 
glory  in  the  face  of  Constance,  and  I  should  be — what  ?  My  for- 
tunes, broken  as  they  are,  can  support  me  alone,  and  with  my 
few  wants.  But  if  married  ?  The  haughty  Constance  my  wife  ? 
Nay,  nay,  nay !  this  must  not  be  thought  of !  I,  the  hero  of 
Paris  !  the  pupil  of  Saville !  I,  to  be  so  beguiled  as  even  to  dream 
of  such  a  madness  ! 

"  Yet  I  have  that  within  me  that  might  make  a  stir  in  the 
world — I  might  rise.  Professions  are  open ;  the  Diplomacy,  the 
House  of  Commons.  What !  Percy  Godolphin  be  ass  enough  to 
grow  ambitious  !  To  toil,  to  fret,  to  slave,  to  answer  fools  on  a 
first  principle,  and  die  at  length  of  a  broken  heart  or  a  lost  place  ! 
Pooh,  pooh  !  I,  who  despise  your  prime-ministers,  can  scarcely 
stoop  to  their  apprenticeship.  Life  is  too  short  for  toil.  And 
what  do  men  strive  for  ? — to  enjoy  :  but  why  not  enjoy  without 
the  toil  ?  And  relinquish  Constance  ?  Ay,  it  is  but  one  woman 
lost !  " 

So  ended  the  soliloquy  of  a  man  scarcely  of  age.  The  world 
teaches  us  its  last  lessons  betimes;  but  then,  lest  we  should  have 
nothing  left  to  acquire  from  its  wisdom,  it  employs  the  rest  of  our 
life  in  unlearning  all  that  it  first  taught. 

Meanwhile,  the  time  approached  when  Lord  Erpingham  was  to 
arrive  at  Wendover  Castle ;  and  at  length  came  the  day  itself. 
Naturally  anxious  to  enjoy  as  exclusively  as  possible  the  company 
of  her  son  the  first  day  of  his  return  from  so  long  an  absence, 
Lady  Erpingham  had  asked  no  one  to  meet  him.  The  Earl's 
heavy  travelling-carriage  at  length  rolled  clattering  up  the  court- 
yard ;  and  in  a  few  minutes  a  tall  man,  in  the  prime  of  life,  and 
borrowing  some  favorable  effect  as  to  person  from  the  large  cloak 
of  velvet  and  furs  which  hung  round  him,  entered  the  room,  and 
Lady  Erpingham  embraced  her  son.  The  kind  and  familiar  man- 
ner with  which  he  answered  her  inquiries  and  congratulations  was 
somewhat  changed  when  he  suddenly  perceived  Constance.  Lord 
Erpingham  was  a  cold  man,  and,  like  most  cold  men,  ashamed  of 
the  evidence  of  affection.  He  greeted  Constance  very  quietly ;  and, 
as  she  thought,  slightly ;  but  his  eyes  turned  to  her  far  more  often 


GOtJOLPHtN.  5  7 

than  any  friend  of  Lord  Erpingham's  might  ever  have  remarked 
those  large  round  hazel  eyes  turn  to  any  one  before. 

When  the  Earl  withdrew  to  adjust  his  toilet  for  dinner,  Lady 
Erpingham,  as  she  wiped  her  eyes,  could  not  help  exclaiming  to 
Constance :  "  Is  he  not  handsome  ?  What  a  figure  !  " 

Constance  was  a  little  addicted  to  flattery  where  she  liked  the 
one  who  was  to  be  flattered,  and  she  assented  readily  enough  to 
the  maternal  remark.  Hitherto,  however,  she  had  not  observed 
anything  more  in  Lord  Erpingham  than  his  height  and  his  cloak  : 
as  he  re-entered  and  led  her  to  the  dining-room  she  took  a  better, 
though  still  but  a  casual,  survey. 

Lord  Erpingham  was  that  sort  of  person  of  whom  men  always 
say,  "What  a  prodigiously  fine  fellow  !  "  He  was  above  six  feet 
high,  stout  in  proportion :  not,  indeed,  accurately  formed,  nor 
graceful  in  bearing,  but  quite  as  much  so  as  a  man  of  six  feet  high 
need  be.  He  had  a  manly  complexion  of  brown,  yellow,  and  red. 
His  whiskers  were  exceedingly  large,  black,  and  well  arranged. 
His  eyes,  as  I  have  before  said,  were  round,  large,  and  hazel; 
they  were  also  unmeaning.  His  teeth  were  good;  and  his  nose, 
neither  aquiline  nor  Grecian,  was  yet  a  very  showy  nose  upon  the 
whole.  All  the  maid-servants  admired  him;  and  you  felt,  in 
looking  at  him,  that  it  was  a  pity  our  army  should  lose  so  good  a 
grenadier. 

Lord  Erpingham  was  a  Whig  of  the  old  school ;  he  thought  the 
Tory  boroughs  ought  to  be  thrown  open.  He  was  generally  con- 
sidered a  sensible  man.  He  had  read  Blackstone,  Montesquieu, 
Cowper's  Poems,  and  "The  Rambler";  and  he  was  always  heard 
with  great  attention  in  the  House  of  Lords.  In  his  moral  char- 
acter he  was  a  bon  vivant,  as  far  as  wine  is  concerned ;  for  choice 
eating  he  cared  nothing.  He  was  good-natured,  but  close;  brave 
enough  to  fight  a  duel,  if  necessary ;  and  religious  enough  to  go 
to  church  once  a  week — in  the  country. 

So  far  Lord  Erpingham  might  seem  modelled  from  one  of  Sir 
Walter's  heroes :  we  must  reverse  the  medal,  and  show  the  points 
in  which  he  differed  from  those  patterns  of  propriety. 

Like  the  generality  of  his  class,  he  was  peculiarly  loose  in 
his  notions  of  women,  though  not  ardent  in  pursuit  of  them. 
His  amours  had  been  among  opera  dancers,  "because,"  as  he 
was  wont  to  say,  "there  was  nod — d  bore  with  them."  Lord 
Erpingham  was  always  considered  a  high-minded  man.  People 
chose  him  as  an  umpire  in  quarrels  ;  and  told  a  story  (which  was 
not  true)  of  his  having  held  some  state  office  for  a  whole  year, 
and  insisted  on  returning  the  emoluments. 

Such  was  Robert  Earl  of  Erpingham.     During  dinner,  at  which 


5  8  GODOLPHItf. 

he  displayed,  to  his  mother's  great  delight,  a  most  excellent  appe- 
tite, he  listened,  as  well  as  he  might,  considering  the  more  legiti- 
mate occupation  of  the  time  and  season,  to  Lady  Erpingham's 
recitals  of  county  history  ;  her  long  answers  to  his  brief  inquiries 
whether  old  friends  were  dead  and  young  ones  married  ;  and  his 
countenance  brightened  up  to  an  expression  of  interest — almost  of 
intelligence — when  he  was  told  that  birds  were  said  to  be  plentiful. 

As  the  servants  left  the  room,  and  Lord  Erpingham  took  his 
first  glass  of  claret,  the  conversation  fell  upon  Percy  Godolphin. 

"He  has  been  staying  with  us  a  whole  fortnight,"  said  Lady 
Erpingham;  "and,  by  the  by,  he  said  he  had  met  you  in  Italy, 
and  mentioned  your  name  as  it  deserved." 

"Indeed  !  And  did  he  really  condescend  to  praise  me?"  said 
Lord  Erpingham,  with  eagerness;  for  there  was  that  about  Godol- 
phin, and  his  reputation  for  fastidiousness,  which  gave  a  rarity 
and  a  value  to  his  praise,  at  least  to  lordly  ears.  "Ah  !  he's  a 
queer  fellow:  he  led  a  very  singular  life  in  Italy." 

"So  I  have  always  heard,"  said  Lady  Erpingham.  "But  of 
what  description?  Was  he  very  wild?" 

' '  No,  not  exactly :  there  was  a  good  deal  of  mystery  about  him ; 
he  saw  very  few  English,  and  those  were  chiefly  men  who  played 
high.  He  was  said  to  have  a  great  deal  of  learning,  and  so 
forth." 

"Oh!  then  he  was  surrounded,  I  suppose,  by  those  medalists 
and  picture-sellers,  and  other  impostors,  who  live  upon  such  of 
our  countrymen  as  think  themselves  blessed  with  a  taste  or  afflicted 
with  a  genius,"  said  Lady  Erpingham;  who,  having  lived  with 
the  wits  and  orators  of  the  time,  had  caught  mechanically  their 
way  of  rounding  a  period. 

"Far  from  it !  "  returned  the  Earl.  "Godolphin  is  much  too 
deep  a  fellow  for  that :  he's  not  easily  taken  in,  I  assure  you.  I 
confess  I  don't  like  him  the  worse  for  that,"  added  the  close 
noble.  "But  he  lived  with  the  Italian  doctors  and  men  of  sci- 
ence; and  encouraged,  in  particular,  one  strange  fellow  \\ho 
affected  sorcery,  I  fancy,  or  something  very  like  it.  Godolphin 
resided  in  a  very  lonely  spot  at  Rome  :  and  I  believe  laboratories, 
and  caldrons,  and  all  sorts  of  devilish  things,  were  always  at  work 
there — at  least,  so  people  said." 

"And  yet,"  said  Constance,  "you  thought  him  too  sensible  to 
be  easily  taken  in  ?" 

"Indeed  I  do,  Miss  Vernon;  and  the  proof  of  it  is,  that  no 
man  has  less  fortune  or  is  more  made  of.  He  plays,  it  is  true, 
but  only  occasionally;  though  as  a  player  at  games  of  skill — 


GODOLPHIN.  59 

piquet,  billiards,  whist — he  has  no  equal,  unless  it  be  Saville. 
But  then  Saville,  entre  nous,  is  suspected  of  playing  unfairly." 

"And  you  are  quite  sure,"  said  the  placid  Lady  Erpingham, 
"that  Mr.  Godolphin  is  only  indebted  to  skill  for  his  success?  " 

Constance  darted  a  glance  of  fire  at  the  speaker. 

"Why,  faith,  I  believe  so!  No  one  ever  accused  him  of  a 
single  shabby,  or  even  suspicious  trick :  and,  indeed,  as  I  said 
before,  no  one  was  ever  more  sought  after  in  society,  though  he 
shuns  it;  and  he's  devilish  right,  for  it's  a  cursed  bore!  " 

"  My  dear  Robert !     At  your  age  !  "  exclaimed  the  mother. 

"  But,"  continued  the  Earl,  turning  to  Constance ;  "  But,  Miss 
Vernon,  a  man  may  have  his  weak  point;  and  the  cunning  Italian 
may  have  hit  on  Godolphin's,  clever  as  he  is  in  general:  though, 
for  my  part,  I  will  tell  you  frankly,  I  think  he  only  encouraged 
him  to  mystify  and  perplex  people,  just  to  get  talked  of — vanity, 
in  short.  He's  a  good-looking  fellow,  that  Godolphin — eh?" 
continued  the  Earl,  in  the  tone  of  a  man  who  meant  yet  to  deny 
what  he  asserted. 

" Oh,  beautiful !"  said  Lady  Erpingham.  "Such  a  counte- 
nance !  " 

"Deuced  pale,  though! — eh? — and  not  the  best  of  figures: 
thin,  narrow  shouldered,  eh — eh?" 

Godolphin's  proportions  were  faultless ;  but  your  strapping 
heroes  think  of  a  moderate-sized  man  as  mathematicians  define  a 
point — declare  that  he  has  no  length  nor  breadth  whatsoever. 

"  What  say  you,  Constance  ?  "  asked  Lady  Erpingham,  mean- 
ingly. 

Constance  felt  the  meaning,  and  replied  calmly,  that  Mr.  Go- 
dolphin  appeared  to  her  handsomer  than  any  one  she  had  seen 
lately. 

Lord  Erpingham  played  with  his  neckcloth,  and  Lady  Erping- 
ham rose  to  leave  the  room.  "  D — d  fine  girl  !  "  said  the  Earl, 
as  he  shut  the  door  upon  Constance  ;  "but  d — d  sharp  !  "  added 
he,  as  he  resettled  himself  on  his  chair. 


60  GODOLPHltf. 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

CONSTANCE  AT  HER  TOILET. — HER  FEELINGS. — HER  CHARACTER  OP 
BEAUTY  DESCRIBED. — THE  BALL. — THE  DUCHESS  OF  WINSTOUN 
AND  HER  DAUGHTER. — AN  INDUCTION  FROM  THE  NATURE  OF  FE- 
MALE RIVALRIES. — JEALOUSY  IN  A  LOVER. — IMPERTINENCE  RE- 
TORTED.— LISTENERS  NEVER  HEAR  GOOD  OF  THEMSELVES. — RE- 
MARKS ON  THE  AMUSEMENTS  OF  A  PUBLIC  ASSEMBLY. — THE 
SUPPER. — THE  FALSENESS  OF  SEEMING  GAIETY. — VARIOUS  REFLEC- 
TIONS, NEW  AND  TRUE. — WHAT  PASSES  BETWEEN  GODOLPH1N 
AND  CONSTANCE. 

IT  was  the  evening  of  the  ball  to  be  given  in  honor  of  Lord 
Erpingham's  arrival.  Constance,  dressed  for  conquest,  sat  alone 
in  her  dressing-room.  Her  woman  had  just  left  her.  The  lights 
still  burned  in  profusion  about  the  antique  chamber  (  antique,  for 
it  was  situated  in  the  oldest  part  of  the  castle)  :  those  lights 
streamed  full  upon  the  broad  brow  and  exquisite  features  of  Miss 
Vernon.  As  she  leaned  back  in  her  chair,  the  fairy  foot  upon 
the  low  Gothic  stool,  and  the  hands  drooping  beside  her  despond- 
ingly,  her  countenance  betrayed  much,  but  not  serene,  thought; 
and,  mixed  with  that  thought,  was  something  of  irresolution  and 
of  great  and  real  sadness. 

It  is  not,  as  I  have  before  hinted,  to  be  supposed  that  Constance's 
lot  had  been  hitherto  a  proud  one,  even  though  she  was  the  most 
admired  beauty  of  her  day ;  even  though  she  lived  with,  and  re- 
ceived adulation  from,  the  high,  and  noble,  and  haughty  of 
her  land.  Often,  in  the  glittering  crowd  that  she  attracted 
around  her,  her  ear,  sharpened  by  the  jealousy  and  pride  of  her 
nature,  caught  words  that  dashed  the  cup  of  pleasure  and  of  van- 
ity with  shame  and  anger.  "What!  that  the  Vernon's  daugh- 
ter ?  Poor  girl  !  dependent  entirely  on  Lady  Erpingham  !  Ah  ! 
she'll  take  in  some  rich  roturier,  I  hope." 

Such  words  from  ill-tempered  dowagers  and  faded  beauties  were 
no  unfrequent  interruption  to  her  brief-lived  and  wearisome  tri- 
umphs. She  heard  maneuvering  mothers  caution  their  booby 
sons,  whom  Constance  would  have  looked  into  the  dust  had  they 
dared  but  to  touch  her  hand,  against  her  untitled  and  undowried 
charms.  She  saw  cautious  earls  who  were  all  courtesy  one  night, 
all  coldness  another,  as  some  report  had  reached  them,  accusing 
their  hearts  of  feeling  too  deeply  her  attractions,  for,  as  they 
themselves  suspected,  for  the  first  time,  that  a  heart  was  not  a 
word  for  a  poetical  nothing,  and  that  to  look  on  so  beautiful  and 
glorious  a  creature  was  sufficient  to  convince  them,  even  yet,  of 


GODOLPHIN.  61 

the  possibility  of  emotion.  She  had  felt  to  the  quick  the  conde- 
scending patronage  of  duchesses  and  chaperons  /  the  oblique  hint ; 
the  nice  and  fine  distinction  which,  in  polished  circles,  divides 
each  grade  from  the  other,  and  allows  you  to  be  galled  without 
the  pleasure  of  feeling  justified  in  offence. 

All  this,  which,  in  the  flush  and  heydey  of  youth,  and  gaiety, 
and  loveliness, would  have  been  unnoticed  by  other  women, rankled 
deep  in  the  mind  of  Constance  Vernon.  The  image  of  her  dying 
lather,  his  complaints,  his  accusations  (the  justice  of  which  she 
never  for  an  instant  questioned),  rose  up  before  her  in  the  bright- 
est hours  of  the  dance  and  the  revel.  She  was  not  one  of  those 
women  whose  meek  and  gentle  nature  would  fly  what  wounds 
them:  Constance  had  resolved  to  conquer.  Despising  glitter,  and 
gaiety,  and  show,  she  burned,  she  thirsted  for  power — a  power 
which  could  retaliate  the  insults  she  fancied  she  had  received,  and 
should  turn  condescension  into  homage.  This  object,  which  every 
causal  word,  every  heedless  glance  from  another,  fixed  deeper  and 
deeper  in  her  heart,  took  a  sort  of  sanctity  from  the  associations 
with  which  she  linked  it — her  father's  memory  and  his  dying 
breath. 

At  this  moment  in  which  we  have  portrayed  her,  all  these  rest- 
less, and  sore,  and  haughty  feelings  were  busy  within ;  but  they 
were  combated,  even  while  the  more  fiercely  aroused,  by  one  soft 
and  tender  thought :  the  image  of  Godolphin — of  Godolphin,  the 
spendthrift  heir  of  a  broken  fortune  and  a  fallen  house.  She  felt 
too  deeply  that  she  loved  him;  and,  ignorant  of  his  worldlier 
qualities,  imagined  that  he  loved  her  with  all  the  devotion  of  that 
romance,  and  the  ardor  of  that  genius,  which  appeared  to  her  to 
compose  his  character.  But  this  persuasion  gave  her  now  no 
delightful  emotion.  Convinced  that  she  ought  to  reject  him,  his 
image  only  colored  with  sadness  those  objects  and  that  ambition 
which  she  had  hitherto  regarded  with  an  exulting  pride.  She  was 
not  the  less  bent  on  the  lofty  ends  of  her  destiny  ;  but  the  glory 
and  the  illusion  had  fallen  from  them.  She  had  taken  an  insight 
into  futurity,  and  felt  that  to  enjoy  power  was  to  lose  happiness. 
Yet,  with  this  full  conviction,  she  forsook  the  happiness  and  clung 
to  the  power.  Alas  for  our  best  and  wisest  theories,  our  problems, 
our  systems,  our  philosophy !  Human  beings  will  never  cease  to 
mistake  the  means  for  the  end  ;  and,  despite  the  dogmasof  sages, 
our  conduct  does  not  depend  on  our  convictions. 

Carriage  after  carriage  had  rolled  beneath  the  windows  of  the 
room  where  Constance  sat,  and  still  she  moved  not ;  until,  at 
length,  a  certain  composure,  as  if  the  result  of  some  determina- 
tion, stole  over  her  features.  The  brilliant  and  transparent  hues 


62  GODOLPHIN. 

returned  to  her  cheeks,  and,  as  she  rose  and  stood  erect,  with  & 
certain  calmness  and  energy  on  her  lip  and  forehead,  perhaps  her 
beauty  had  never  seemed  of  so  lofty  and  august  a  cast.  In  pass- 
ing through  the  chamber,  she  stopped  for  a  moment  opposite  the 
mirror  that  reflected  her  stately  shade  in  its  full  height.  Beauty 
is  so  truly  the  weapon  of  woman,  that  it  is  as  impossible  for  her,  even 
in  grief,  wholly  to  forget  its  effect,  as  it  is  for  the  dying  warrior  to 
look  with  indifference  on  the  sword  with  which  he  lias  won  his 
trophies  or  his  fame.  Nor  was  Constance  that  evening  disposed 
to  be  indifferent  to  the  effect  she  should  produce.  She  looked  on 
the  reflection  of  herself  with  a  feeling  of  triumph,  not  arising  from 
vanity  alone. 

And  when  did  mirror  ever  give  back  a  form  more  worthy  of  a 
Pericles  to  worship,  or  an  Apelles  to  paint?  Though  but  little 
removed  from  the  common  height,  the  impression  Constance 
always  gave  was  that  of  a  person  much  taller  than  she  really  was. 
A  certain  majesty  in  the  turn  of  the  head,  the  fall  of  the  shoulders, 
the  breadth  of  the  brow,  and  the  exceeding  calmness  of  the  feat- 
ures, invested  her  with  an  air  which  I  have  never  seen  equalled  by 
any  one,  but  which,  had  Pasta  been  a  beauty,  she  might  have 
possessed.  But  there  was  nothing  hard  or  harsh  in  this  majesty. 
Whatsoever  of  a  masculine  nature  Constance  mighthave  inherited, 
nothing  masculine,  nothing  net  exquisitely  feminine,  was  visible 
in  her  person.  Her  shape  was  rounded,  and  sufficiently  full  to 
show,  that  in  middle  age  its  beauty  would  be  preserved  by  that 
richness  and  freshness  with  a  moderate  increase  of  the  proportions 
always  given  to  the  sex.  Her  arms  and  hands  were,  and  are,  even 
to  this  day,  of  a  beauty  the  more  striking,  because  it  is  so  rare. 
Nothing  in  any  European  country  is  more  uncommon  than  an  arm 
really  beautiful  both  in  hue  and  shape.  In  any  assembly  we  go 
to,  what  miserable  bones,  what  angular  elbows,  what  red  skins,  do 
we  see  under  the  cover  of  those  capacious  sleeves,  which  are  only 
one  whit  less  ugly.  At  the  time  I  speak  of  those  coverings  were 
not  worn;  and  the  white,  round,  dazzling  arm  of  Constance,  bare 
almost  to  the  shoulder,  was  girded  by  dazzling  gems,  which  at  once 
set  off,  and  were  foiled  by,  the  beauty  of  nature.  Her  hair  was 
of  the  most  luxuriant,  and  of  the  deepest,  black  ;  and  it  was  worn 
in  a  fashion — then  uncommon,  without  being  bizarre  ;  now  hack- 
neyed by  the  plainest  faces,  though  suiting  only  the  highest  order 
of  beauty — I  mean  that  simple  and  classic  fashion  to  which  the 
French  have  given  a  name  borrowed  from  Calypso,  but  which 
appears  to  me  suited  rather  to  an  intellectual  than  a  voluptuous 
goddess.  Her  long  lashes,  and  a  brow  delicately  but  darkly  pen- 


GODOLPHIN.  63 

cilled,  gave  additional  eloquence  to  an  eye  of  the  deepest  blue, 
and  a  classic  contour  to  a  profile  so  slightly  aquiline  that  it  was 
commonly  considered  Grecian.  That  necessary  completion  to  all 
real  beauty  of  either  sex,  the  short  and  curved  upper  lip,  termi- 
nated in  the  most  dazzling  teeth,  and  the  ripe  and  dewy  under  lip 
added  to  what  was  noble  in  her  beauty  that  charm  also  which  is 
exclusively  feminine.  Her  complexion  was  capricious  ;  now  pale, 
now  tinged  with  the  pink  of  the  sea-shell,  or  the  softest  shade  of 
the  rose-leaf ;  but  in  either  it  was  so  transparent,  that  you  doubted 
which  became  her  the  most.  To  these  attractions,  add  a  throat, 
a  bust  of  the  most  dazzling  whiteness,  and  the  justest  proportions ; 
a  foot,  whose  least  beauty  was  its  smallness ;  and  a  waist  narrow 
— not  the  narrowness  of  tenuity  or  constraint — but  round,  gradual, 
insensibly  less  in  its  compression  :  and  the  person  of  Constance 
Vernon,  in  the  bloom  of  her  youth,  is  before  you. 

She  passed  with  her  quiet  and  stately  step  from  her  room, 
through  one  adjoining  it,  and  which  we  stop  to  notice,  because  it 
was  her  customary  sitting-room  when  not  with  Lady  Erpingham. 
There  had  Godolphin,  with  the  foreign  but  courtly  freedom,  the 
respectful  and  chivalric  ease  of  his  manners,  often  sought  her; 
there  had  he  lingered  in  order  to  detain  her  yet  a  moment  and  a 
moment  longer  from  other  company,  seeking  a  sweet  excuse  in 
some  remark  on  the  books  that  strewed  the  tables,  or  the  music  in 
that  recess,  or  the  forest  scene  from  those  windows  through  which 
the  moon  of  autumn  now  stole  with  its  own  peculiar  power  to 
soften  and  subdue.  As  these  recollections  came  across  her,  her 
step  faltered  and  her  color  faded  from  its  glow  :  she  paused  a 
moment,  cast  a  mournful  glance  round  the  room,  and  then  tore 
herself  away,  descended  the  lofty  staircase,  passed  the  stone-hall 
melancholy  with  old  banners  and  rusted  crest,  and  bore  her  beauty 
and  her  busy  heart  into  the  thickening  and  gay  crowd. 

Her  eye  looked  once  more  round  for  the  graceful  form  of 
Godolphin :  but  he  was  not  visible  ;  and  she  had  scarcely  satisfied 
herself  of  this  before  Lord  Erpingham,  the  hero  of  the  evening, 
approached  and  claimed  her  hand. 

"  I  have  just  performed  my  duty,"  said  he,  with  a  gallantry  of 
speech  not  common  to  him;  "now  for  my  reward.  I  have 
danced  the  first  dance  with  Lady  Margaret  Midgecombe :  I  come, 
according  to  your  promise,  to  dance  the  second  with  you.' ' 

There  was  something  in  these  words  that  stung  one  of  the  mor- 
bid remembrances  in  Miss  Vernon's  mind.  Lady  Margaret 
Midgecombe,  in  ordinary  life,  would  have  been  thought  a  good- 
looking,  vulgar  girl — she  was  a  Duke's  daughter,  and  she  was 


64  GODOLPHIN. 

termed  a  Hebe.  Her  little  nose,  and  her  fresh  color,  and  her 
silly  but  not  unmalicious  laugh,  were  called  enchanting ;  and  all 
irregularities  of  feature,  and  faults  of  shape,  were  absolutely 
turned  into  merits  by  that  odd  commendation,  so  common  with 
us :  "A  deuced  fine  girl ;  none  of  your  regular  beauties." 

Not  only  in  the  county  of shire,  but  in  London,  had  Lady 

Margaret  Midgecombe  been  set  up  as  the  rival  beauty  of  Con- 
stance Vernon.  And  Constance,  far  too  lovely,  too  cold,  too 
proud,  not  to  acknowledge  beauty  in  others,  where  it  really 
existed,  was  nevertheless  unaffectedly  indignant  at  a  comparison 
so  unworthy :  she  even,  at  times,  despised  her  own  claims  to 
admiration,  since  claims  so  immeasurably  inferior  could  be  put 
into  competition  with  them.  Added  to  this  sore  feeling  for  Lady 
Margaret,  was  one  created  by  Lady  Margaret's  mother.  The 
Duchess  of  Winstoun  was  a  woman  of  ordinary  birth,  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  peer  of  great  wealth  but  new  family.  She  had  married, 
however,  one  of  the  most  powerful  dukes  in  the  peerage ;  a  stu- 
pid, heavy,  pompous  man,  with  four  castles,  eight  parks,  a  coal- 
mine, a  tin-mine,  six  boroughs,  and  about  thirty  livings.  Inact- 
ive and  reserved,  the  Duke  was  seldom  seen  in  public  :  the  care 
of  supporting  his  rank  devolved  on  the  Duchess ;  and  she  sup- 
ported it  with  as  much  solemnity  of  purpose  as  if  she  had  been  a 
cheesemonger's  daughter.  Stately,  insolent,  and  coarse;  asked 
everywhere ;  insulting  all ;  hated  and  courted  ;  such  was  the 
Duchess  of  Winstoun,  and  such,  perhaps,  have  been  other  duch- 
esses before  her. 

Be  it  understood  that,  at  that  day,  Fashion  had  not  risen  to  the 
despotism  it  now  enjoys :  it  took  its  coloring  from  Power,  not 
controlled  it.  I  shall  show,  indeed,  how  much  of  its  present  con- 
dition that  Fashion  owes  to  the  Heroine  of  these  Memoirs.  The 
Duchess  of  Winstoun  could  not  now  be  that  great  person  she  was 
then  :  there  is  a  certain  good  taste  in  Fashion  which  repels  the 
mere  insolence  of  Rank;  which  requires  persons  to  be  either 
agreeable,  or  brilliant,  or  at  least  original ;  which  weighs  stupid 
dukes  in  a  righteous  balance,  and  finds  vulgar  duchesses  wanting. 
But  in  lack  of  this  new  authority — this  moral  sebastocrator 
between  the  Sovereign  and  the  dignity  hitherto  considered  next 
to  the  Sovereign's — her  Grace  of  Winstoun  exercised  with  impun- 
ity the  rights  of  insolence.  She  had  taken  an  especial  dislike  to 
Constance :  partly  because  the  few  good  judges  of  beauty,  who 
care  neither  for  rank  nor  report,  had  very  unreservedly  placed 
Miss  Vernon  beyond  the  reach  ot  all  competition  with  her  daugh- 
ter ;  and  principally,  because  the  high  spirit  and  keen  irony  of 
Constance  had  given  more  than  once  to  the  duchess's  effrontery 


GODOLPH1N.  65 

so  cutting  and  so  public  a  check,  that  she  had  felt  with  astonish- 
ment and  rage  there  was  one  woman  in  that  world — that  woman 
too  unmarried — who  could  retort  the  rudeness  of  the  Duchess  of 
Winstoun.  Spiteful,  however,  and  numerous  were  the  things  she 
said  of  Miss  Vernon,  when  Miss  Vernon  was  absent ;  and  haughty 
beyond  measure  were  the  inclination  of  her  head  and  the  tone  of 
her  voice  when  Miss  Vernon  was  present.  If,  therefore,  Con- 
stance was  disliked  by  the  Duchess,  we  may  readily  believe  that 
she  returned  the  dislike.  The  very  name  roused  her  spleen  and 
her  pride;  and  it  was  with  a  feeling  all  a  woman's  though 
scarcely  feminine  in  the  amiuble  sense  of  the  word,  that  she 
learned  to  whom  the  honor  of  Lord  Erpingham's  precedence  had 
been  (though  necessarily)  given. 

As  Lord  Erpingham  led  her  to  her  place,  a  buzz  of  admiration 
and  enthusiasm  followed  her  steps.  This  pleased  Erpingham 
more  than,  at  that  moment,  it  did  Constance.  Already  intoxi- 
cated by  her  beauty,  he  was  proud  of  the  effect  it  produced  on 
others,  for  that  effect  was  a  compliment  to  his  taste.  He  exerted 
himself  to  be  agreeable ;  nay,  more,  to  be  fascinating :  he  affected 
a  low  voice ;  and  he  attempted — poor  man  ! — to  flatter. 

The  Duchess  of  Winstoun  and  her  daughter  sat  behind  on  an 
elevated  bench.  They  saw  with  especial  advantage  the  attentions 
with  which  one  of  the  greatest  of  England's  earls  honored  the 
daughter  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  England's  orators.  They  were 
shocked  at  his  want  of  dignity.  Constance  perceived  their  cha- 
grin, and  she  lent  a  more  pleased  and  attentive  notice  to  Lord 
Erpingham's  compliments  :  her  eyes  sparkled  and  her  cheek 
blushed  :  and  the  good  folks  around,  admiring  Lord  Erpingham's 
immense  whiskers,  thought  Constance  in  love. 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  Percy  Godolphin  entered  the  room. 

Although  Godolphin's  person  was  not  of  a  showy  order,  there 
was  something  about  him  that  always  arrested  attention.  His  air  ; 
his  carriage  ;  his  long  fair  locks  ;  his  rich  and  foreign  habit  of 
dress,  which  his  high  bearing  and  intellectual  countenance 
redeemed  from  coxcombry ;  all,  united,  gave  something  remark- 
able and  distinguished  to  his  appearance ;  and  the  interest 
attached  to  his  fortunes,  and  to  his  social  reputation  for  genius 
and  eccentricity,  could  not  fail  of  increasing  the  effect  he  pro- 
duced when  his  name  was  known. 

From  the  throng  of  idlers  that  gathered  around  him ;  from  the 
bows  of  the  great  and  the  smiles  of  the  fair,  Godolphin,  however, 
directed  his  whole  notice — his  whole  soul — to  the  spot  which  was 
hallowed  by  Constance  Vernon.  He  saw  her  engaged  with  a 
man  rich,  powerful,  and  handsome.  He  saw  that  she  listened 

5 


66  GODOLPH1N. 

to  her  partner  with  evident  interest;  that  he  addressed  her 
with  evident  admiration.  His  heart  sank  within  him  j  he  felt 
faint  and  sick ;  then  came  anger,  mortification  ;  then  agony 
and  despair.  All  his  former  resolutions — all  his  prudence, 
his  worldliness,  his  caution — vanished  at  once;  he  felt  only  that 
he  loved,  that  he  was  supplanted,  that  he  was  undone.  The  dark 
and  fierce  passions  of  his  youth,  of  a  nature  in  reality  wild  and  vehe- 
ment, swept  away  at  once  the  projects  and  the  fabrics  of  that 
shallow  and  chill  philosophy  he  had  borrowed  from  the  world, 
and  deemed  the  wisdom  of  the  closet.  A  cottage  and  a  desert 
with  Constance — Constance  all  his,  heart  and  hand — would  have 
been  Paradise :  he  would  have  nursed  no  other  ambition,  nor 
dreamed  of  a  reward  beyond.  Such  effect  has  jealousy  upon  us. 
We  confide,  and  we  hesitate  to  accept  a  boon  :  we  are  jealous, 
and  we  would  lay  down  life  to  attain  it. 

"  What  a  handsome  fellow  Erpingham  is  !  "  said  a  young  man 
in  a  cavalry  regiment. 

Godolphin  heard,  and  groaned  audibly. 

"  And  what  a  devilish  handsome  girl  he  is  dancing  with  !  " 
said  another  young  man,  from  Oxford. 

"  Oh,  Miss  Vernon  !  By  Jove,  Erpingham  seems  smitten. 
What  a  capital  thing  it  would  be  for  her  !  " 

"  And  for  him,  too  !  "  cried  the  more  chivalrous  Oxonian. 

"  Humph  !  "  said  the  officer. 

"I  heard,"  renewed  the  Oxonian,  "that  she  was  to  be  mar- 
ried to  young  Godolphin.  He  was  staying  here  a  short  time  ago. 
They  rode  and  walked  together.  What  a  lucky  fellow  he  has 
been  !  I  don't  know  any  one  I  should  so  much  like  to  see." 

"Hush  !  "  said  a  third  person,  looking  at  Godolphin. 

Percy  moved  on.  Accomplished  and  self-collected  as  he 
usually  was,  he  could  not  wholly  conceal  the  hell  within.  His 
brow  grew  knit  and  gloomy  ;  he  scarcely  returned  the  salutations 
he  received  ;  and  moving  out  of  the  crowd,  he  stole  to  a  seat  be- 
hind a  large  pillar,  and  scarcely  seen  by  any  one,  fixed  his  eyes 
on  the  form  and  movements  of  Miss  Vernon. 

It  so  happened  that  he  had  placed  himself  in  the  vicinity  of  the 
Duchess  of  Winstoun,  and  within  hearing  of  the  conversation  that 
I  am  about  to  record. 

The  dance  being  over,  Lord  Erpingham  led  Constance  to  a  seat 
close  by  Lady  Margaret  Midgecombe.  The  Duchess  had  formed 
her  plan  of  attack  ;  and,  rising  as  she  saw  Constance  within  rtach, 
approached  her  with  an  air  that  affected  civility. 

"  How  do  you  do,  Miss  Vernon?     I  am  happy  to  see  you  look- 


GODOLPHIN.  67 

ing  so  well.     What  truth  in  the  report,  eh  ?  "     And  the  Duchess 
showed  her  teeth — videlicet,  smiled. 

"  What  report  does  Your  Grace  allude  to  ?  " 

"  Nay,  nay ;  I  am  sure  Lord  Erpingham  has  heard  it  as  well  as 
myself;  and  I  wish  for  your  sake  (  a  slight  emphasis)  indeed,  for 
both  your  sakes,  that  it  may  be  true. ' ' 

"  To  wait  till  the  Duchess  of  Winstoun  speaks  intelligibly 
would  be  a  waste  of  her  time  and  my  own,"  said  the  haughty 
Constance,  with  the  rudeness  in  which  she  then  delighted,  and 
for  which  she  has  since  become  known.  But  the  Duchess  was  not 
to  be  offended  until  she  had  completed  her  manoeuvre. 

"  Well,  now,"  said  she,  turning  to  Lord  Erpingham,  "I  ap- 
peal to  you  :  is  not  Miss  Vernon  to  be  married  very  soon  to  Mr. 
Godolphin?  I  am  sure  (with  an  affected  good-nature  and  com- 
passion that  stung  Constance  to  the  quick),  I  am  sure  I  hope  so." 

"Upon  my  word  you  amaze  me,"  said  Lord  Erpingham, 
opening  to  their  fullest  extent,  the  large,  round,  hazel  eyes,  for 
which  he  was  so  justly  celebrated.  "  I  never  heard  this  before." 

"  Oh  !  a  secret  as  yet  ?  "  said  the  Duchess :  "Very  well !  I  can 
keep  a  secret." 

Lady  Margaret  looked  down,  and  laughed  prettily. 

"I  thought  till  now,"  said  Constance,  with  grave  composure, 
"  that  no  person  could  be  more  contemptible  than  one  who  col- 
lects idle  reports :  I  now  find  I  was  wrong :  a  person  infinitely 
more  contemptible  is  one  who  invents  them." 

The  rude  Duchess,  beat  at  her  own  weapons,  blushed  with  an- 
ger even  through  her  rouge  :  but  Constance  turned  away ;  and, 
still  leaning  on  Lord  Erpingham's  arm,  sought  another  seat,  that 
seat,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  pillar  behind  which  Godolphin 
sat,  was  still  within  his  hearing. 

"Upon  my  word,  Miss  Vernon,"  said  Lord  Erpingham,  "I 
admire  your  spirit.  Nothing  like  setting  down  those  absurd 
people  who  try  to  tease  one,  and  think  one  dares  not  retort. 
But  pray — I  hope  I'm  not  impertinent — pray  may  I  ask  if  this 
rumor  have  any  truth  in  it  ?  " 

"Certainly  not,"  said  Constance,  with  great  effort,  but  in  a 
clear  tone. 

"  No  :  I  should  have  thought  not;  I  should  have  thought  not. 
Godolphin's  much  too  poor, — much  too  poor  for  you.  Miss  Ver- 
non is  not  born  to  marry  for  love  in  a  cottage, — is  she  ?  " 

Constance  sighed. 

That  soft,  low  tone  thrilled  to  Godolphin's  very  heart.  He 
bent  forward  :  he  held  his  breath  :  he  thirsted  for  her  voice  ;  for 
some  tone,  some  word  in  answer ;  it  came  not  at  that  moment. 


68  GODOLPHIN. 

"  You  remember,"  renewed  the  Earl;  "  You  remember  Miss 

L ?  No  :  she  was  before  your  time.  Well  !  She  married 

S ,  much  such  another  fellow  like  Godolphin.  He  had  not 

a  shilling ;  but  he  lived  well :  had  a  house  in  Mayfair  ;  gave  din- 
ners ;  hunted  at  Melton,  and  so  forth :  in  short,  he  played  high. 
She  had  about  ten  thousand  pounds.  They  married,  and  lived  for 
two  years  so  comfortably,  you  have  no  idea.  Every  one  envied 
them.  They  did  not  keep  a  close  carriage,  but  he  used  to  drive 
her  out  to  dinners  in  his  French  cabriolet.*  There  was  no  show, 
no  pomp:  everything  deuced  neat,  though;  quite  love  in  a  cot- 
tage— only  the  cottage  was  in  Curzon  Street.  At  length,  hovever, 

the  cards  turned  ;  S lost  everything  ;  owed  more  than  he 

could  ever  pay ;  we  were  forced  to  cut  him  ;  and  his  relation, 

Lord ,  coming  into  the  ministry  a  year  afterwards,  got  him  a 

place  in  the  Customs.  They  live  at  Brompton  :  he  wears  a  pep- 
per-and-salt coat,  and  she  a  mob-cap,  with  pink  ribands:  they 
have  five  hundred  a  year,  and  ten  children.  Such  was  the  fate  of 

S 's  wife;  such  may  be  the  fate  of  Godolphm's.  Oh,  Miss 

Vernon  could  not  marry  him!" 

"You  are  right,  Lord  Erpingham,"  said  Constance  with  em- 
phasis; "  but  you  take  too  much  license  in  expressing  your  opin- 
ion." 

Before  Lord  Erpingham  could  stammer  forth  his  apology,  they 
heard  a  slight  noise  behind  :  they  turned  ;  Godolphin  had  risen. 
His  countenance,  always  inclined  to  a  calm  severity — for  thought 
is  usually  severe  in  its  outward  aspect — bent  now  on  both  the 
speakers  with  so  dark  and  menacing  an  aspect  that  the  stout  Earl 
felt  his  heart  stand  still  for  a  moment ;  and  Constance  was  ap- 
palled as  if  it  had  been  the  apparition,  and  not  the  living  form, 
of  her  lover  that  she  beheld.  But  scarcely  had  they  seen  this  ex- 
pression of  countenance,  ere  it  changed.  With  a  cold  and 
polished  smile,  a  relaxed  brow,  and  profound  inclination  of  his 
form  Godolphin  greeted  the  two ;  and»  passing  from  his  seat  with 
a  slow  step,  glided  among  the  crowd  and  vanished. 

What  a  strange  thing,  after  all,  is  a  great  assembly  !  An  im- 
mense mob  of  persons,  who  feel  for  each  other  the  profoundest 
indifference,  met  together  to  join  in  amusements,  which  the  large 
majority  of  them  consider  wearisome  beyond  conception.  How 
unintelligent,  how  uncivilized,  such  a  scene,  and  such  actors  i 
What  a  remnant  of  barbarous  times,  when  people  danced  be- 
cause they  had  nothing  to  say  !  Were  there  nothing  ridiculous 
in  dancing,  there  would  be  nothing  ridiculous  in  seeing  wise  men 

*  Then  uncommon. 


GODOLPHIN.  69 

dance.  But  that  sight  would  be  ludicrous,  because  of  the  dispar- 
ity between  the  mind  and  the  occupation.  However,  we  have 
some  excuse  ;  we  go  to  these  assemblies  to  sell  our  daughters,  or 
flirt  with  our  neighbors'  wives.  A  ball-room  is  nothing  more  or 
less  than  a  great  market  place  of  beauty.  For  my  part,  were  I  a 
buyer,  I  should  like  making  my  purchases  in  a  less  public  mart. 

"Come  Godolphin,  a  glass  of  champagne,"  cried  the  young 
Lord  Belvoir,  as  they  sat  near  each  other  at  the  splendid  supper. 

"With  all  my  heart ;  but  not  from  that  bottle  !  We  must  have 
a  new  one ;  for  this  glass  is  pledged  to  Lady  Delmour,  and  I 
would  not  drink  to  her  health  but  from  the  first  sparkle  !  Nothing 
tame,  nothing  insipid,  nothing  that  has  lost  its  freshness,  can  be 
dedicated  to  one  so  beautiful  and  young." 

The  fresh  bottle  was  opened,  and  Godolphin  bowed  over  his 
glass  to  Lord  Belvoir's  sister — a  Beauty  and  a  Blue.  Lady  Del- 
mour admired  Godolphin,  and  she  was  flattered  by  a  compliment 
that  no  one  wholly  educated  in  England,  would  have  the  gallant 
courage  to  utter  across  a  crowded  table. 

' '  You  have  been  dancing ! ' '  said  she. 

"No!" 

"What  then!" 

"What  then?"  said  Godolphin;  "  Ah,  Lady  Delmour,  do  not 
ask."  The  look  that  accompanied  the  words  supplied  them  with 
a  meaning.  "Need  I  add,"  said  he,  in  a  lower  voice,  "that  I 
have  been  thinking  of  the  most  beautiful  person  present?" 

"Pooh  !  "  said  Lady  Delmour,  turning  away  her  head. 

Now,  that  pooh  is  a  very  significant  word.  On  the  lips  of  a 
man  of  business,  it  denotes  contempt  for  a  romance;  on  the  lips 
of  a  politician,  it  rebukes  a  theory.  With  that  monosyllable,  a 
philosopher  massacres  a  fallacy ;  by  those  four  letters,  a  rich  man 
gets  rid  of  a  beggar.  But  in  the  rosy  mouth  of  a  woman,  the 
hardness  vanishes,  the  disdain  becomes  encouragement.  "  Pooh  !  " 
says  the  lady  when  you  tell  her  she  is  handsome  ;  but  she  smiles 
when  she  says  it.  With  the  same  reply  she  receives  your  protes- 
tation of  love,  and  blushes  as  she  receives.  With  men  it  is  the 
sternest,  with  women  the  softest,  exclamation  in  the  language. 

"Pooh!"  said  Lady  Delmour,  turning  away  her  head — and 
Godolphin  was  in  singular  spirits.  What  a  strange  thing  that  we 
should  call  such  hilarity  from  our  gloom !  The  stroke  induces 
the  flash ;  excite  the  nerves  by  jealousy,  by  despair,  and  with  the 
proud,  you  only  trace  the  excitement  by  the  mad  mirth  and  hys- 
terical laughter  it  creates. 

Godolphin  was  charming  comme  un  amour,  and  the  young 
Countess  was  delighted  with  his  gallantry. 


73  GODOLPHIN. 

"Did  you  ever  love?"  asked  she  tenderly,  as  they  sat  alone 
after  supper. 

"Alas,  yes  !  "  said  he. 

"How  often?" 

"Read  Marmontel's  story  of  the  'Four  Phials.'  I  have  no 
other  answer." 

Oh,  what  a  beautiful  tale  that  is !  The  whole  history  of  a 
man's  heart  is  contained  in  it ! 

While  Godolphin  was  thus  talking  with  Lady  Delmour,  his 
whole  soul  was  with  Constance ;  of  her  only  he  thought,  and  on 
her  he  thirsted  for  revenge.  There  is  a  curious  phenomenon  in 
love,  showing  how  much  vanity  has  to  do  with  even  the  best  spe- 
cies of  it;  when,  for  your  mistress  to  prefer  another,  changes  all 
your  affection  into  hatred ;  is  it  the  loss  of  the  mistress,  or  her 
preference  to  the  other  ?  The  last,  to  be  sure :  for,  if  the  former, 
you  would  only  grieve ;  but  jealousy  does  not  make  you  grieve,  it 
makes  you  enraged;  it  does  not  sadden,  it  stings.  After  all,  as 
we  grow  old,  and  look  back  on  the  "master  passion,"  how  we 
smile  at  the  fools  it  made  of  us;  at  the  importance  we  attach  to 
it ;  at  the  millions  that  have  been  governed  by  it !  When  we 
examine  the  passion  of  love,  it  is  like  examining  the  character  of 
some  great  man ;  we  are  astonished  to  perceive  the  littlenesses 
that  belong  to  it.  We  ask  in  wonder,  ' '  How  came  such  effects 
from  such  a  cause?" 

Godolphin  continued  talking  sentiment  with  Lady  Delmour 
until  her  lord,  who  was  very  fond  of  his  carriage-horses,  came  up 
and  took  her  away  ;  and  then,  perhaps,  glad  to  be  relieved,  Percy 
sauntered  into  the  ball-room,  where,  though  the  crowd  was  some- 
what thinned,  the  dance  was  continued  with  that  spirit  which 
always  seems  to  increase  as  the  night  advances. 

For  my  own  part,  I  now  and  then  look  late  in  at  a  ball  as  a 
warning  and  grave  memento  of  the  flight  of  time.  No  amuse- 
ment belongs  of  right  so  essentially  to  the  young,  in  their  first 
youth ;  to  the  unthinking,  the  intoxicated ;  to  those  whose  blood 
is  an  elixir. 

"If  Constance  be  woman,"  said  Godolphin  to  himself,  as  he 
returned  to  the  ball-room,  "I  will  yet  humble  her  to  my  will.  I 
have  not  learned  the  science  so  long,  to  be  now  foiled  in  the  first 
moment  I  have  seriously  wished  to  triumph." 

As  this  thought  inspired  and  excited  him,  he  moved  along  at 
some  distance  from,  but  carefully  within  the  sight  of,  Constance. 
He  paused  by  Lady  Margaret  Midgecombe.  He  addressed  her. 
Notwithstanding  the  insolence  and  the  ignorance  of  the  Duchess 
of  Winstoun,  he  was  well  received  by  both  mother  and  daughter. 


GODOLPHIN.  ?! 

Some  persons  there  are,  in  all  times  and  in  all  spheres,  who  com- 
mand a  certain  respect  bought  neither  by  riches,  rank  nor  even 
scrupulous  morality  of  conduct.  They  win  it  by  the  reputation 
that  talent  alone  can  win  them,  and  which  yet  is  not  always  the 
reputation  of  talent.  No  man,  even  in  the  frivolous  societies  of 
the  great,  obtains  homage  without  certain  qualities,  which,  had 
they  been  happily  directed,  would  have  conducted  him  to  fame. 

Had  the  attention  of  a  Grammont,  or  of  a ,  been  early  turned 

towards  what  ought  to  be  the  objects  desired,  who  can  doubt  that, 
instead  of  the  heroes  of  a  circle,  they  might  have  been  worthy  of 
becoming  names  of  posterity? 

Thus,  the  genius  of  Godolphin  had  drawn  around  him  an  eclat 
which  made  even  the  haughtiest  willing  to  receive  and  to  repay 
his  notice ;  and  Lady  Margaret  actually  blushed  with  pleasure 
when  he  asked  her  to  dance.  A  foreign  dance,  then  only  very 
partially  known  in  England,  had  been  called  for:  few  were 
acquainted  with  it,  those  only  who  had  been  abroad  ;  and  as  the 
movements  seemed  to  require  peculiar  grace  of  person,  some  even 
among  those  few  declined,  through  modesty,  the  exhibition. 

To  this  dance  Godolphin  led  Lady  Margaret.  All  crowded 
round  to  see  the  performers;  and  as  each  went  through  the  giddy 
and  intoxicating  maze,  they  made  remarks  on  the  awkwardness, 
or  the  singularity,  or  the  impropriety  of  the  dance.  But  when 
Godolphin  began,  the  murmurs  changed.  The  slow  and  stately 
measure  then  adapted  to  the  steps  was  one  in  which  the  graceful 
symmetry  of  his  person  might  eminently  display  itself.  Lady 
Margaret  was  at  least  as  well  acquainted  with  the  dance ;  and  the 
couple  altogether  so  immeasurably  excelled  all  competitors  that 
the  rest,  as  if  sensible  of  it,  stopped  one  after  the  other;  and 
when  Godolphin,  perceiving  that  they  were  alone,  stopped  also, 
the  spectators  made  their  approbation  more  audible  than  approba- 
tion usually  is  in  polished  society. 

As  Godolphin  paused,  his  eyes  met  those  of  Constance.  There 
was  not  there  the  expression  he  had  anticipated  ;  there  was  neither 
the  anger  of  jealousy,  nor  the  restlessness  of  offended  vanity,  nor 
the  desire  of  conciliation,  visible  in  those  large  and  speaking  orbs. 
A  deep,  a  penetrating,  a  sad  inquiry  seemed  to  dwell  in  her  gaze; 
seemed  anxious  to  pierce  into  his  heart,  and  to  discover  whether 
there  she  possessed  the  power  to  wound,  or  whether  each  had 
been  deceived ;  so  at  least  seemed  that  fixed  and  melancholy 
intenseness  of  look  to  Godolphin.  He  left  Lady  Margaret 
abruptly :  in  an  instant  he  was  by  the  side  of  Constance. 

"  You  must  be  delighted  with  this  evening,"  said  he  bitterly  : 
"wherever  I  go  I  hear  your  praises ;  every  one  admires  you ;  and 


72  GODOLPHIN. 

he  who  does  not  admire  so  much  as  worship  you,  he  alone  is  beneath 
your  notice.  He — born  to-  such  shattered  fortunes, — he  indeed 
might  never  aspire  to  that  which  titled  and  wealthy  idiots  deem 
they  may  command, — the  hand  of  Constance  Vernon." 

It  was  with  a  low  and  calm  tone  that  Godolphin  spoke.  Con- 
stance turned  deadly  pale  :  her  frame  trembled ;  but  she  did  not 
answer  immediately.  She  moved  to  a  seat  retired  a  little  from 
the  busy  crowd  :  Godolphin  followed,  and  sat  himself  beside 
her ;  and  then,  with  a  slight  effort,  Constance  spoke. 

"  You  heard  what  was  said,  Mr.  Godolphin,  and  I  grieve  to 
think  you  did.  If  I  offended  you,  however,  forgive  me,  I  pray 
you ;  I  pray  it  sincerely — warmly.  God  knows  I  have  suffered 
myself  enough  from  idle  words,  and  from  the  slighting  opinion 
with  which  this  hard  world  visits  the  poor,  not  to  feel  deep  regret 
and  shame  if  I  wound,  by  like  means,  another,  more  especially" 
— Constance's  voice  trembled — "  more  especially  you  /" 

As  she  spoke,  she  turned  her  eyes  on  Godolphin,  and  they  were 
full  of  tears.  The  tenderness  of  her  voice,  her  look,  melted  him 
at  once.  Was  it  to  him,  indeed,  that  the  haughty  Constance 
addressed  the  words  of  kindness  and  apology  ? — to  him  whose 
extrinsic  circumstances  she  had  heard  described  as  so  unworthy 
of  her,  and,  his  reason  told  him,  with  such  justice? 

"Oh,  Miss  Vernon!''  said  he,  passionately;  "  Miss  Vernon 
— Constance — dear,  dear  Constance  !  dare  I  call  you  so?  hear 
me  one  word.  I  love  you  with  a  love  which  leaves  me  no  words 
to  tell  it.  I  know  my  faults,  my  poverty,  my  unworthiness  :  but 
— but — may  I — may  I  hope? 

And  all  the  woman  was  in  Constance's  cheek,  as  she  listened. 
That  cheek,  how  richly  was  it  dyed !  Her  eyes  drooped  ;  her 
bosom  heaved.  How  every  word  in  those  broken  sentences  sank 
into  her  heart !  Never  was  a  tone  forgotten.  The  child  may  for- 
get its  mother,  and  the  mother  desert  the  child  :  but  never,  never 
from  a  woman's  heart  departs  the  memory  of  the  first  confession 
of  love  from  him  whom  she  first  loves  !  She  lifted  her  eyes,  and 
again  withdrew  them,  and  again  gazed. 

"  This  must  not  be,"  at  last  she  said  ;  "  No,  no  !  it  is  folly, 
madness  in  both  !  " 

"  Not  so;  not  so  !  "  whispered  Godolphin,  in  the  softest  notes 
of  a  voice  that  could  never  be  harsh.  "  It  may  seem  folly — mad- 
ness if  you  will — that  the  brilliant  and  all-idolized  Miss  Vernon 
should  listen  to  the  vows  of  so  lowly  an  adorer  :  but  try  me, 
prove  me  and  own — yes,  you  will  own  some  years  hence — that 
that  folly  has  been  happy  beyond  the  happiness  of  prudence  or 
pmbition," 


GODOLPHIN.  73 

"  This  !  "  answered  Constance,  struggling  with  her  emotions ; 
"this  is  no  spot  or  hour  for  such  a  conference.  Let  us  meet  to- 
morrow— the  western  chamber." 

"And  the  hour?" 

"  Twelve  !  " 

"  And  I  may  hope — till  then  ?  " 

Constance  again  grew  pale;  and  in  a  voice  that,  though  it 
scarcely  left  her  lips,  struck  coldness  and  dismay  into  his  sudden 
and  delighted  confidence,  answered  : 

"No,  Percy,  there  is  no  hope  !     None  !  " 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE  INTERVIEW. — THE  CRISIS  OF  A  LIFE. 

THE  western  chamber  was  that  I  have  mentioned  as  the  one  in 
which  Constance  usually  fixed  her  retreat,  when  neither  sociabil- 
ity nor  state  summoned  her  to  the  more  public  apartments.  I 
should  have  said  that  Godolphin  slept  in  the  house ;  for,  coming 
from  a  distance,  and  through  country  roads,  Lady  Erpingham 
had  proffered  him  that  hospitality,  and  he  had  willingly  accepted 
it.  Before  the  appointed  hour,  he  was  at  the  appointed  spot. 

He  had  passed  the  hours  till  then  without  even  seeking  his  pil- 
low. In  restless  strides  across  his  chamber,  he  had  revolved  those 
words  with  which  Constance  had  seemed  to  deny  the  hopes  she 
herself  had  created.  All  private  and  more  selfish  schemes,  or 
reflections,  had  vanished,  as  by  magic,  from  the  mind  of  a  man 
prematurely  formed,  but  not  yet  wholly  hardened,  in  the  mould 
of  worldly  speculation.  He  thought  no  more  of  what  he  should 
relinquish  in  obtaining  her  hand  with  the  ardor  of  boyish  and 
real  love,  he  thought  only  of  her.  It  was  as  if  there  existed  no 
world  but  the  little  spot  in  which  she  breathed  and  moved.  Pov- 
3rty,  privation,  toil,  the  change  of  the  manners  and  habits  of  his 
whole  previous  life,  to  those  of  professional  enterprise  and  self- 
denial  ;  to  all  this  he  looked  forward,  not  so  much  with  calmness 
as  with  triumph. 

"Be  but  Constance  mine!"  said  he  again  and  again;  and 
again  and  again  those  fatal  words  knocked  at  his  heart,  "  No  hope 
— none  !  "  and  he  gnashed  his  teeth  in  very  anguish,  and  mut- 
tered, "  But  mine  she  will  not — she  will  never  be  !  " 

Still,  however,  before  the  hour  of  noon,  something  of  his  habit- 
ual confidence  returned  to  him.  He  had  succeeded,  though  but 
partially,  in  reasoning  away  the  obvious  meaning  of  the  words ; 
he  ascended  to  the  chamber  from  the  gardens,  in  which  he 


74  GODOLPHIN. 

had  sought,  by  the  air,  to  cool  his  mental  fever,  with  a  sentiment, 
ominous  and  doubtful  indeed,  but  still  removed  from  despond- 
ency and  despair. 

The  day  was  sad  and  heavy.  A  low,  drizzling  rain,  and  labor- 
ing yet  settled  clouds,  which  denied  all  glimpse  of  the  sky,  and 
seemed  cursed  into  stagnancy  by  the  absence  of  all  wind  or  even 
breeze,  increased  by  those  associations  we  endeavor  in  vain  to 
resist,  the  dark  and  oppressive  sadness  of  his  thoughts. 

He  paused  as  he  laid  his  hand  on  the  door  of  the  chamber :  he 
listened ;  and  in  the  acute  and  painful  life  which  seemed  breathed 
into  all  his  senses,  he  felt  as  if  he  could  have  heard — though  with- 
out the  room — the  very  breath  of  Constance ;  or  known,  as  by  an 
inspiration,  the  presence  of  her  beauty.  He  opened  the  door 
gently :  all  was  silence  and  desolation  for  him — Constance  was 
not  there  ! 

He  felt,  however,  as  if  that  absence  was  a  relief.  He  breathed 
more  freely,  and  seemed  to  himself  more  prepared  for  the  meet- 
ing. He  took  his  station  by  the  recess  of  the  window  :  in  vain 
— he  could  rest  in  no  spot :  he  walked  to  and  fro,  pausing  only 
for  a  moment  as  some  object  before  him  reminded  him  of  past 
and  more  tranquil  hours.  The  books  he  had  admired,  and  which, 
at  his  departure,  had  been  left  in  their  usual  receptacle  at  another 
part  of  the  house,  he  now  discovered  on  the  tables  :  they  opened 
of  themselves  at  the  passages  he  had  read  aloud  to  Constance : 
those  passages,  in  his  presence,  she  had  not  seemed  to  admire  : 
he  was  inexpressively  touched  to  perceive  that,  in  his  absence, 
they  had  become  dear  to  her.  As  he  turned  with  a  beating  heart 
from  this  silent  proof  of  affection,  he  was  startled  by  the  sudden 
and  almost  living  resemblance  to. Constance,  which  struck  upon 
him  in  a  full-length  picture  opposite — the  picture  of  her  father. 
That  picture,  by  one  of  the  best  of  our  great  modern  masters  of 
the  art,  had  been  taken  of  Vernon  in  the  proudest  epoch  of  his 
prosperity  and  fame.  He  was  portrayed  in  the  attitude  in  which 
he  had  uttered  one  of  the  most  striking  sentences  of  one  of  his 
most  brilliant  orations  :  the  hand  was  raised,  the  foot  advanced, 
the  chest  expanded.  Life,  energy,  command,  flashed  from  the 
dark  eye,  breathed  from  the  dilated  nostril,  broke  from  the 
inspired  lip.  That  noble  brow — those  modelled  features — that 
air  so  full  of  the  royalty  of  genius — how  startlingly  did  they 
resemble  the  softer  lineaments  of  Constance  ! 

Arrested,  in  spite  of  himself,  by  the  skill  of  the  limner,  and  the 
characteristics  of  the  portrait,  Godolphin  stood  motionless  and 
gazing,  till  the  door  opened  and  Constance  herself  stood  before 
him.  She  smiled  faintly,  but  with  sweetness,  as  she  approached; 


GODOLPHIN.  75 

and  seating  herself,  motioned  him  to  a  chair  at  a  little  distance. 
He  obeyed  the  gesture  in  silence. 

"  Godolphin  !  "  said  she,  softly.  At  the  sound  of  her  voice  he 
raised  his  eyes  from  the  ground,  and  fixed  them  on  her  counte- 
nance with  a  look  so  full  of  an  imploring  and  earnest  meaning,  so 
expressive  of  the  passion,  the  suspense  of  his  heart,  that  Constance 
felt  her  voice  cease  at  once.  But  he  saw  as  he  gazed  how  power- 
ful had  been  his  influence.  Not  a  vestige  of  bloom  was  on  her 
cheek;  her  very  lips  were  colorless;  her  eyes  were  swollen  with 
weeping;  and  though  she  seemed  very  calm  and  self-possessed, 
all  her  wonted  majesty  of  mien  was  gone !  The  form  seemed  to 
shrink  within  itself.  Humbleness  and  sorrow — deep,  passionate, 
but  quiet  sorrow — had  supplanted  the  haughtiness  and  the  elastic 
freshness  of  her  beauty.  "  Mr.  Godolphin,"  she  repeated,  after 
a  pause,  "answer  me  truly  and  with  candor  :  not  with  the  world's 
gallantry,  but  with  a  sincere,  a  plain  avowal.  Were  you  not — in 
your  unguarded  expressions  last  night — were  you  not  excited  by 
the  surprise,  the  passion,  of  the  moment  ?  Were  you  not  uttering 
what,  had  you  been  actuated  only  by  a  calm  and  premeditated 
prudence,  you  would  at  least  have  suppressed  ?" 

"Miss  Vernon,"  replied  Godolphin,  "all  that  I  said  last  night, 
I  now,  in  calmness  and  with  deliberate  premeditation,  repeat:  all 
that  I  can  dream  of  happiness  is  in  your  hands." 

"  I  would,  indeed,  that  I  could  disbelieve  you,"  said  Con- 
stance, sorrowfully  ;  "I  have  considered  deeply  on  your  words. 
I  am  touched,  made  grateful,  proud — yes,  truly  proud — by  your 
confessed  affection — but — " 

"Oh,  Constance!  "  cried  Godolphin,  in  a  sudden  and  ago- 
nized voice,  and  rising,  he  flung  himself  impetuously  at  her  feet : 
"  Constance  !  do  not  reject  me  !  " 

He  seized  her  hand  :  it  struggled  not  with  his.  He  gazed  on 
her  countenance  :  it  was  dyed  in  blushes ;  and  before  those 
blushes  vanished  her  agitation  found  relief  in  tears,  which  flo\red 
fast  and  full. 

"  Beloved  !  "  said  Godolphin,  with  a  solemn  tenderness,  "why 
struggle  with  your  heart?  That  heart  I  read  at  this  moment:  that 
is  not  averse  to  me."  Constance  wept  on.  "I  know  what  you 
would  say,  and  what  you  would  feel,"  continued  Godolphin 
"you  think  that  I — that  we  both — are  poor:  that  you  could 
ill  bear  the  humiliations  of  that  haughty  poverty  which  those 
born  to  higher  fortunes  so  irksomely  endure.  You  tremble  to 
link  your  fate  with  one  who  has  been  imprudent,  lavish — selfish, 
if  you  will.  You  recoil  before  you  entrust  your  happiness  to 
•'i  who,  if  he  wreck  that,  can  offer  you  nothing  in  return: 


76  GODOLPHIN. 

no  rank,  no  station ;  nothing  to  heal  a  bruised  heart,  or  cover 
its  wound,  at  least,  in  the  rich  disguises  of  power  and  wealth. 
Am  I  not  right,  Constance  ?  Do  I  not  read  your  mind  ?" 

"No!"  said  Constance,  with  energy.  "Had  I  been  born 
any  man's  daughter  but  his  from  whom  I  take  my  name;  were  I 
the  same  in  all  things,  mind  and  heart,  save  in  one  feeling,  one 
remembrance,  one  object,  that  I  am  now ;  Heaven  is  my  witness 
that  I  would  not  cast  a  thought  upon  poverty — upon  privation  ; 
that  I  would — nay,  I  do — I  do  confide  in  your  vows,  your  affec- 
tion. If  you  have  erred,  I  know  it  not.  If  any  but  you  tell  me 
you  have  erred,  I  believe  them  not.  You  I  trust  wholly  and  im- 
plicitly. Heaven,  I  say,  is  my  witness  that,  did  I  obey  the  voice 
of  my  selfish  heart,  I  would  gladly,  proudly,  share  and  follow 
your  fortunes.  You  mistake  me  if  you  think  sordid  and  vulgar 
ambition  can  only  influence  me.  No  !  I  could  be  worthy  of  you  ! 
The  daughter  of  John  Vernon  could  be  a  worthy  wife  to  the  man 
of  indigence  and  genius.  In  your  poverty  I  could  soothe  you;  in 
your  reverses  console,  in  your  prosperity  triumph.  But — but,  it  must 
not  be.  Go,  Godolphin — dear  Godolphin  !  There  are  thousands 
better  and  fairer  than  I  am,  who  will  do  for  you  as  I  would  have 
done ;  but  who  possess  the  power,  I  have  not — who,  instead  of 
sharing,  can  raise  your  fortunes.  Go  ! — and  if  it  comfort,  if  it 
soothe  you,  believe  that  I  have  not  been  insensible  to  your  gener- 
osity, your  love.  My  best  wishes,  my  fondest  prayers,  my  dear- 
est hopes,  are  yours." 

Blinded  by  her  tears,  subdued  by  her  emotions,  Constance  was 
still  herself.  She  rose ;  she  extricated  her  hand  from  Godol- 
phin's ;  she  turned  to  leave  the  room.  But  Godolphin,  still  kneel' 
ing,  caught  hold  of  her  robe,  and  gently,  but  effectually  detained 
her. 

"The  picture  you  have  painted,"  said  he,  "  do  not  destroy  at 
once.  You  have  portrayed  yourself  my  soother,  guide,  restorer. 
You  can,  indeed  you  can,  be  this.  You  do  not  know  me,  Con- 
stance. Let  me  say  one  word  for  myself.  Hitherto,  I  have 
shunned  fame  and  avoided  ambition.  Life  has  seemed  to  me  so 
short,  and  all  that  even  glory  wins  so  poor,  that  I  have  thought 
no  labor  worth  the  price  of  a  single  hour  of  pleasure  and  enjoyment. 
For  you,  how  joyfully  will  I  renounce  my  code  !  For  myself,  I  could 
ask  no  honor  :  for  you,  I  will  labor  for  all.  No  toil  shall  be  dry 
to  me,  no  pleasure  shall  decoy.  I  will  renounce  my  idle  and  de- 
sultory pursuits.  I  will  enter  the  great  public  arena,  where  all 
who  come  armed  with  patience  and  with  energy  are  sure  to  win. 
Constance,  1  am  not  without  talents,  though  they  have  slept 


GODOLPHIN.  7  7 

within  me  ;  say  but  the  word,  and  you  know  not  what  they  can 
produce. ' ' 

An  irresolution  in  Constance  was  felt  as  a  sympathy  by  Godol- 
phin ;  he  continued  : 

"We  are  both  desolate  in  the  world,  Constance;  we  are 
orphans — friendless,  fortuneless.  Yet  both  have  made  our  way 
without  friends,  and  commanded  our  associates,  though  without 
fortune.  Does  not  this  declare  we  have  that  within  us  which, 
when  we  are  united,  can  still  exalt  or  conquer  our  destiny  ?  And 
we — we — alone  in  the  noisy  and  contentious  world  with  which  we 
strive — we  shall  turn,  after  each  effort  to  our  own  hearts,  and  find 
there  a  comfort  and  a  shelter.  All  things  will  bind  us  closer  and 
closer  to  each  other.  The  thought  of  our  past  solitude,  the  hope 
of  our  future  objects,  will  only  feed  the  fountain  of  our  present 
love.  And  how  much  sweeter,  Constance,  will  be  honors  to  you, 
if  we  thus  win  them;  sanctified,  as  they  will  be,  by  the  sacrifices 
we  have  made ;  by  the  thought  of  the  many  hours  in  which  we 
desponded,  yet  took  consolation  from  each  other  ;  by  the  thought 
how  we  sweetened  mortifications  by  sympathy,  and  made  even  the 
lowest  success  noble  by  the  endearing  associations  with  which  we 
allied  them  !  How  much  sweeter  to  you  will  be  such  honors  than 
those  which  you  might  command  at  once,  but  accompanied  by 
a  cold  heart ;  rendered  wearisome  because  won  with  ease,  and  low 
because  undignified  by  fame  !  Oh,  Constance  !  am  I  not  heard  ? 
Have  not  love,  nature,  sense,  triumphed?  " 

As  he  spoke,  he  had  risen  gently,  and  wound  his  arms  around 
her  not  reluctant  form ;  her  head  reclined  upon  his  bosom ;  her 
hand  was  surrendered  to  his ;  and  his  kiss  stole  softly  and  unchid- 
den  to  her  cheek.  At  that  instant,  the  fate  of  both  hung  on  a 
very  hair.  How  different  might  the  lot,  the  character  of  each  have 
been,  had  Constance's  lips  pronounced  the  words  that  her  heart 
already  recorded  !  And  she  might  have  done  so ;  but,  as  she  raised 
her  eyes,  the  same  object  that  had  before  affected  Godolphin 
came  vividly  upon  her,  and  changed,  as  by  an  electric  shock,  the 
whole  current  of  her  thoughts.  Full  and  immediately  before  her 
was  the  picture  of  her  father.  The  attitude  there  delineated,  so 
striking  at  all  times,  seemed  to  Constance  at  that  moment  more  than 
ever  impressive,  and  even  awful  in  the  livingness  of  its  command. 
It  was  the  face  of  Vernon  in  the  act  of  speech — of  warning,  of 
reproof;  such  as  she  had  seen  it  often  in  private  life ;  such  as  she 
had  seen  it  in  his  bitter  maledictions  on  his  hollow  friends  at  the 
close  of  his  existence  :  nay,  such  as  she  had  seen  it — only  more 
iearful  and  ghastly  with  the  hues  of  death — in  his  last  hours ;  in 
those  hours  in  which  he  had  pledged  her  to  the  performance  of  his 


78  GODOLPHIN. 

revenge,  and  bade  her  live  not  for  love  but  the  memory  of  her 
sire. 

With  the  sight  of  that  face  rushed  upon  her  the  dark  and  sol- 
emn recollections  of  that  time  and  of  that  vow.  The  weakness 
of  love  vanished  before  the  returning  force  of  a  sentiment  nursed 
through  her  earliest  years,  fed  by  her  dreams,  strengthened  by  her 
studies,  and  hardened  by  the  daring  energies  of  nature  lofty  yet 
fanatical,  into  the  rule,  the  end,  nay,  the  very  religion  of  life  ! 
She  tore  herself  away  from  the  surprised  and  dismayed  Godolphin ; 
she  threw  herself  on  her  knees  before  the  picture  ;  her  lips  moved 
rapidly ;  the  rapid  and  brief  prayer  for  forgiveness  was  over,  and 
Constance  rose  a  new  being.  She  turned  to  Godolphin,  and,  lift- 
ing her  arm  towards  the  picture,  as  she  regarded,  with  her  bright 
and  kindling  eyes,  the  face  of  her  lover,  she  said  : 

"  As  you  think  now,  thought  he  whose  voice  speaks  to  you  from 
the  canvas ;  he,  who  pursued  the  path  that  you  would  tread ; 
who,  through  the  same  toil,  the  same  pursuit,  that  you  would 
endure,  used  the  same  powers  and  the  same  genius  you  would 
command ;  he,  who  won — what  you  might  win  also  at  last — the 
smile  of  princes,  the  trust  of  nobles,  the  shifting  and  sandy  ele- 
vation which  the  best,  the  wisest,  and  greatest  statesmen  in  this 
country,  if  unbacked  by  a  sordid  and  caballing  faction,  can  alone 
obtain;  he  warns  you  from  that  hollow  distinction, — from  its 
wretched  consummation.  Oh,  Godolphin  !  "  she  continued,  sub- 
dued, and  sinking  from  a  high-wrought  but  momentary  paroxysm, 
uncommon  to  her  collected  character,  "  Oh,  Godolphin!  I  saw 
that  man  dying,  deserted,  lonely,  cursed  by  his  genius,  ruined  by 
his  prosperity.  I  saw  him  dying — die — of  a  broken  and  tram- 
meled heart.  Could  I  doom  another  victim  to  the  same  course, 
and  the  same  perfidy,  and  the  same  fate?  Could  I,  with  a  silent 
heart,  watch  by  that  victim;  could  I,  viewing  his  certain  doom, 
elate  him  with  false  hopes  ?  No,  no  !  fly  from  me, — from  the 
thought  of  such  a  destiny.  Marry  one  who  can  bring  you  wealth, 
and  support  you  with  rank ;  then  be  ambitious,  if  you  will. 
Leave  me  to  fulfil  my  doom — MY  Vow ;  and  to  think,  however 
wretched  I  may  be,  that  I  have  not  inflicted  a  permanent  wretch- 
edness on  you." 

Godolphin  sprang  forward  ;  but  the  door  closed  upon  his  eyes ; 
and  he  saw  Constance — as  Constance  Vernon — no  more. 


GODOLPHIN.  79 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

A   RAKE   AND    EXQUISITE   OF   THE   BEST    (WORST)    SCHOOL. A  CON- 
VERSATION ON  A  THOUSAND  MATTERS. THE  DECLENSION  OF  THE 

"  SUI    PROFUSUS"  INTO  THE  "  ALIENI  APPETENS." 

THERE  was,  in  the  day  I  now  refer  to,  a  certain  house  in  Ches- 
terfield Street,  Mayfair,  which  few  young  men  anxious  for  the 
eclat  of  society  passed  without  a  wish  for  the  acquaintance  of  the 
inmate.  To  that  small  and  dingy  mansion,  with  its  verandahs  of 
dusky  green,  and  its  blinds  perpetually  drawn,  there  attached  an 
interest,  a  consideration,  and  a  mystery.  Thither,  at  the  dusk  of 
night,  were  the  hired  carriages  of  intrigue  wont  to  repair,  and 
dames  to  alight,  careful  seemingly  of  concealment,  yet  wanting, 
perhaps,  even  a  reputation  to  conceal.  Few,  at  the  early  hours 
of  morn,  passed  that  street  in  their  way  home  from  some  glittering 
revel  without  noticing  some  three  or  four  chariots  in  waiting ;  or 
without  hearing  from  within  the  walls  the  sound  of  protracted  fes- 
tivity. That  house  was  the  residence  of  a  man  who  had  never 
done  anything  in  public,  and  yet  was  the  most  noted  personage  in 
"  Society";  in  early  life,  the  all-accomplished  Lovelace ;  in  later 
years  mingling  the  graces  with  the  decayed  heart  and  the  want  of 
principle  of  a  Grammont.  Feared,  contemned,  loved,  hated, 
ridiculed,  honored,  the  very  genius,  the  very  personification,  of  a 
civilized  and  profligate  life  seemed  embodied  in  Augustus  Saville. 
Hitherto  we  have  spoken  of,  let  us  now  describe,  him. 

Born  to  the  poor  fortunes  and  equivocal  station  of  cadet,  in  a 
noble  but  impoverished  house,  he  had  passed  his  existence  in  a 
round  of  lavish,  but  never  inelegant,  dissipation.  Unlike  other 
men,  whom  youth,  and  money,  and  the  flush  of  health,  and  aris- 
tocratic indulgence,  allure  to  follies,  which  shock  the  taste  as  well 
as  the  morality  of  the  wise,  Augustus  Saville  had  never  committed 
an  error  which  was  not  varnished  by  grace,  and  limited  by  a  pro- 
found and  worldly  discretion.  A  systematic  votary  of  pleasure, 
no  woman  had  ever  through  him  lost  her  reputation  or  her  sphere ; 
whether  it  was  that  he  corrupted  into  fortunate  dissimulation  the 
minds  that  he  betrayed  into  guilt,  or  whether  he  chose  his  victims 
with  so  just  a  knowledge  of  their  characters,  and  of  the  circum- 
stances round  them,  that  he  might  be  sure  the  secrecy  maintained 
by  himself  would  scarcely  be  divulged  elsewhere.  All  the  world 
attributed  to  Augustus  Saville  the  most  various  and  consummate 
success  in  that  quarter  in  which  success  is  most  envied  by  the 
lighter  part  of  the  world;  yet  no  one  could  say  exactly  who, 
amongst  the  many  he  addressed,  had  been  the  object  of  his  tri- 


o  GODOLPHIN. 

umph.  The  same  quiet,  and  yet  victorious,  discretion  waited 
upon  all  he  did.  Never  had  he  stooped  to  win  celebrity  from 
horses  or  from  carriages;  nothing  in  his  equipages  showed  the 
ambition  to  be  distinguished  from  another;  least  of  all  did  he 
affect  that  most  displeasing  of  minor  ostentations,  that  offensive 
exaggeration  of  neatness,  that  outre  simplicity,  which  our  young 
nobles  and  aspiring  bankers  so  ridiculously  think  it  bon  ton  to 
assume.  No  harness,  industriously  avoiding  brass;  no  liveries, 
pretending  to  the  tranquillity  of  a  gentleman's  dress;  no  panels, 
disdaining  the  armorial  attributes  of  which  real  dignity  should 
neither  be  ashamed  nor  proud — converted  plain  taste  into  a  dis- 
play of  plainness.  He  seldom  appeared  at  races,  and  never 
hunted ;  though  he  was  profound  master  of  the  calculations  in  the 
first,  and  was,  as  regarded  the  second,  allowed  to  be  one  of  the 
most  perfect  masters  of  horsemanship  in  his  time.  So,  in  his 
dress,  while  he  chose  even  sedulously  what  became  him  most,  he 
avoided  the  appearance  of  coxcombry,  by  a  disregard  to  minutiae. 
He  did  not  value  himself  on  the  perfection  of  his  boot ;  and  suf- 
fered a  wrinkle  in  his  coat  without  a  sigh :  yet,  even  the  exquisites 
of  the  time  allowed  that  no  one  was  more  gentleman-like  in  the 
tout-ensemble  ;  and  while  he  sought  by  other  means  than  dress  to 
attract,  he  never  even  in  dress  offended.  Carefully  shunning  the 
character  of  the  professed  wit,  or  the  general  talker,  he  was  yet 
piquant,  shrewd,  and  animated  to  the  few  persons  whom  he 
addressed,  or  with  whom  he -associated :  and  though  he  had 
refused  all  offers  to  enter  public  life,  he  was  sufficiently  master  of 
the  graver  subjects  that  agitated  the  times  to  impress  even  those 
practically  engaged  in  them  with  a  belief  in  his  information  and 
his  talents. 

But  he  was  born  poor ;  and  yet  he  had  lived  for  nearly  thirty 
years  as  a  rich  man  !  What  was  his  secret  ?  He  had  lived  upon 
others  !  At  all  games  of  science  he  played  with  a  masterly  skill ; 
and  in  those  wherein  luck  preponderates,  there  are  always  chances 
for  a  cool  and  systematic  calculation.  He  had  been,  indeed,  sus- 
pected of  unfair  play ;  but  the  charge  had  never  cooled  the  eager- 
ness with  which  he  had  been  courted.  With  far  better  taste,  and 
in  far  higher  estimation  than  Brummell,  he  obtained  an  equal, 
though  a  more  secret,  sway.  Every  one  was  desirous  to  know 
him :  without  his  acquaintance,  the  young  debutant  felt  that  he 
wanted  the  qualification  to  social  success:  by  his  intimacy,  even 
vulgarity  became  the  rage.  It  was  true  that,  as  no  woman's  dis- 
grace was  confessedly  traced  to  him,  so  neither  was  any  man's 
ruin — save  only  in  the  doubtful  instance  of  the  unfortunate  John- 
stone.  He  never  won  of  any  person,  however  ardent,  more  than 


GODOLPHIN.  8 1 

a  certain  portion  of  his  fortune — the  rest  of  his  undoing  Saville 
left  to  his  satellites ;  nay,  even  those  who  had  in  reality  most  rea- 
son to  complain  of  him,  never  perceived  his  due  share  in  their 
impoverishment.  It  was  common  enough  to  hear  men  say,  "  Ah  ! 
Saville,  I  wish  I  had  taken  your  advice,  and  left  off  while  I  had 
yet  half  my  fortune  !  "  They  did  not  accurately  heed  that  the 
first  half  was  Saville's;  because  the  first  half  had  excited,  not 
ruined  them. 

Besides  this  method  of  making  money,  so  strictly  social,  Saville 
had  also  applied  his  keen  intellect  and  shrewd  sense  to  other  spec- 
ulations. Cheap  houses,  cheap  horses,  fluctuations  in  the  funds, 
all  descriptions  of  property,  (except  perhaps  stolen  goods),  had 
passed  under  his  earnest  attention ;  and  in  most  cases,  such  spec- 
ulations had  eminently  succeeded.  He  was  therefore  now,  in  his 
middle  age,  and  still  unmarried,  a  man  decidedly  wealthy ;  hav- 
ing, without  ever  playing  the  miser,  without  ever  stinting  a  luxury, 
or  denying  a  wish,  turned  nothing  into  something,  poverty  into 
opulence. 

It  was  noon;  and  Saville  was  slowly  finishing  his  morning 
repast,  and  conversing  with  a  young  man  stretched  on  a  sofa 
opposite  in  a  listless  attitude.  The  room  was  in  perfect  keeping 
with  the  owner :  there  was  neither  velvet,  nor  gilding,  nor  buhl, 
nor  marquetrie — all  of  which  would  have  been  inconsistent  with 
the  moderate  size  of  the  apartment.  But  the  furniture  was  new, 
massive,  costly,  and  luxurious  without  the  ostentation  of  luxury. 
A  few  good  pictures,  and  several  exquisite  busts  and  figures  in 
bronze,  upon  marble  pedestals,  gave  something  classic  and  grace- 
ful to  the  aspect  of  the  room.  Annexed  to  the  back  drawing- 
room,  looking  over  Lord  Chesterfield's  gardens,  a  small  conserva- 
tory, filled  with  rich  exotics,  made  the  only  feature  in  the  apart- 
ment that  might  have  seemed,  to  a  fastidious,  person,  effeminate 
or  unduly  voluptuous. 

Saville  himself  was  about  forty-seven  years  of  age  ;  of  a  person 
slight  and  thin,  without  being  emaciated  :  a  not  ungraceful, 
though  habitual  stoop,  diminished  his  height,  which  might  be  a 
little  above  the  ordinary  standard.  In  his  youth  he  had  been 
handsome ;  but  in  his  person  there  was  now  little  trace  of  any 
attraction  beyond  that  of  a  manner  remarkably  soft  and  insinuat- 
ing :  yet  in  his  narrow  though  high  forehead,  his  sharp  aquiline 
nose,  gray  eye,  and  slightly  sarcastic  curve  of  lip,  something  of 
his  character  betrayed  itself.  You  saw,  or  fancied  you  saw,  in 
them  the  shrewdness,  the  delicacy  of  tact ;  the  consciousness  of 
duping  others ;  the  subtle  and  intuitive,  yet  bland  and  noiseless, 
penetration  into  the  characters  around  him,  which  made  the  promi- 
6 


82  GODOLPHIN. 

nent  features  of  his  mind.  And,  indeed,  of  all  qualities,  dissim- 
ulation is  that  which  betrays  itself  the  most  often  in  the  physiog- 
nomy. A  fortunate  thing,  that  the  long  habit  of  betraying  should 
find  at  times  the  index  in  which  to  betray  itself. 

"  But  you  don't  tell  me,  my  dear  Godolphin,"  said  Saville,  as 
he  broke  the  toast  into  his  chocolate  ;  "  You  don't  tell  me  how 
the  world  employed  itself  at  Rome.  Were  there  any  of  the  true 
calibre  there  ?  Steady  fellows,  yet  ardent,  like  myself  ?  Men 
who  make  us  feel  our  strength  and  put  it  forth ;  with  whom  we  can- 
not dally  nor  idle  ;  who  require  our  coolness  of  head,  clearness 
of  memory,  ingenuity  of  stratagem — in  a  word,  men  of  my  ART 
— the  art  of  play — were  there  any  such  ?  " 

"  Not  many,  but  enough  for  honor,"  said  Godolphin:  "for 
myself,  I  have  long  forsworn  gambling  for  profit." 

"  Ah  !  I  always  thought  you  wanted  that  perseverance  which 
belongs  to  strength  of  character.  And  how  stand  your  resources 
now  ?  Sufficient  to  recommence  the  world  here  with  credit  and 
eclat?" 

"Ay,  were  I  so  disposed,  Saville.  But  I  shall  return  to  Italy. 
Within  a  month  hence,  I  shall  depart." 

"  What !  and  only  just  arrived  in  town  !  An  heir  in  possess- 
ion !  " 

"Of  what?" 

"  The  reputation  of  having  succeeded  to  a  property,  the  extent 
of  which,  if  wise,  you  will  tell  no  one  !  Are  you  so  young,  Godol- 
phin, as  to  imagine  that  it  signifies  one  crumb  of  this  bread  what 
be  the  rent-roll  of  your  estate,  so  long  as  you  can  obtain  credit 
for  any  sum  to  which  you  are  pleased  to  extend  it  ?  Credit ! 
beautiful  invention  ! — the  moral  new  world  to  which  we  fly  when 
banished  from  the  old.  Credit !  the  true  charity  of  Providence, 
by  which  they  who  otherwise  would  starve  live  in  plenty,  and  de- 
spise the  indigent  rich.  Credit !  admirable  system,  alike  for 
those  who  live  on  it  and  the  wiser  few  who  live  by  it.  Will  you 
borrow  some  money  of  me,  Godolphin  ?  " 

"  At  what  percentage  ?  " 

" Why,  let  me  see :  funds  are  low;  I'll  be  moderate.  But 
stay,  be  it  with  you  as  I  did  with  George  Sinclair.  You  shall 
have  all  you  want,  and  pay  me  with  a  premium,  when  you  marry 
an  heiress.  Why,  man,  you  wince  at  the  word  'marry  ! ' ' 

"  'Tis  a  sore  subject,  Saville  :  one  that  makes  a  man  think  of 
halters." 

"  You  are  right :  I  recognize  my  young  pupil.  Your  old  play 
writers  talked  nonsense  when  they  said  men  lost  liberty  of  person 
by  marriage.  Men  lose  liberty,  but  it  is  the  liberty  of  the  mind. 


GODOLPHIN.  83 

We  cease  to  be  independent  of  the  world's  word  when  we  grow 
respectable  with  a  wife,  a  fat  butler,  two  children,  and  a  family 
coach.  It  makes  a  gentleman  little  better  than  a  grocer  or  a  king  ! 
But  have  you  seen  Constance  Vernon.  Why,  out  on  this  folly, 
Godolphin  !  You  turn  away.  Do  you  fancy  that  I  did  not  pene- 
trate your  weakness  the  moment  you  mentioned  her  name  ?  Still 
less,  do  you  fancy,  my  dear  young  friend,  that  I,  who  have  lived 
through  nearly  half  a  century,  and  know  our  nature,  and  the 
whole  thermometer  of  our  blood,  think  one  jot  the  worse  of  you 
for  forming  a  caprice,  or  a  passion,  if  you  will,  for  a  woman  who 
would  set  an  anchoret,  or,  what  is  still  colder,  a  worn-out  de- 
bauchee, on  fire  ?  Bah  !  Godolphin,  I  am  wiser  than  you  take 
me  for.  And  I  will  tell  you  more.  For  your  sake,  I  am  happy 
that  you  have  incurred  already  this,  our  common  folly  (which  we 
all  have  once  in  a  life),  and  that  the  fit  is  over.  I  do  not  pry  into 
your  secrets  ;  I  know  their  delicacy.  I  do  not  ask  which  of  you 
drew  back ;  for,  to  have  gone  forward,  to  have  married,  would 
have  been  madness  in  both.  Nay,  it  was  an  impossibility :  it 
could  not  have  happened  to  my  pupil ;  the  ablest,  the  subtlest, 
the  wisest  of  my  pupils.  But,  however  it  was  broken  off,  I  repeat 
that  I  am  glad  it  happened.  One  is  never  sure  of  a  man's  wis- 
dom till  he  has  been  really  and  vainly  in  love.  You  know  what 
that  moralizing  bump  of  absurdity,  Lord  Edouard,  has  said  in 
the  Julie :  '  the  path  of  the  passions  conducts  us  to  philosophy  ! ' 
It  is  true,  very  true :  and  now  that  the  path  has  been  fairly  trod , 
the  goal  is  at  hand.  Now,  I  can  confide  in  your  steadiness ;  now 
I  can  feel  that  you  will  run  no  chance,  in  future  of  over-apprecia- 
ting that  bauble,  Woman.  You  will  beg,  borrow,  steal,  and  ex- 
change, or  lose  the  jewel,  with  the  same  delicious  excitement, 
coupled  with  the  same  steady  indifference,  with  which  we  play  at 
a  more  scientific  game,  and  for  a  more  comprehensive  reward. 
I  say  more  comprehensive  reward :  for  how  many  women  may 
we  be  able  to  buy  by  a  judicious  bet  on  the  odd  trick  !  " 

"  Your  turn  is  sudden,"  said  Godolphin,  smiling  ;  "  and  there 
is  some  justice  in  your  reasoning.  The  fit  is  over  ;  and  if  ever  I 
can  be  wise,  I  have  entered  on  wisdom  now.  But  talk  of  this  no 
more. ' ' 

"I  will  not,"  said  Saville,  whose  unerring  tact  had  reached 
just  the  point  where  to  stop,  and  who  had  led  Godolphin  through 
just  that  vein  of  conversation,  half-sentimentalizing,  half-sensible, 
all  profligate,  which  seldom  fails  to  win  the  ear  of  a  man  both  of 
imagination  and  of  the  world.  "I  will  not;  and,  to  vary  the 
topic,  I  will  turn  egotist,  and  tell  you  my  adventures." 
'With  this,  Saville  began  a  light  and  amusing  recital  of  his 


84  GODOLPHIN. 

various  and  singular  life  for  the  last  three  years.  Anecdote,  jest, 
maxim,  remark,  interspersed,  gave  a  zest  and  piquancy  to  the  nar- 
ration. An  accomplished  roue  always  affects  to  moralize  ;  it  is  a 
part  of  his  character.  There  is  a  vague  and  shrewd  sentiment  that 
pervades  his  morale  and  his  system.  Frequent  excitement,  and 
its  attendant  relaxation ;  the  conviction  of  the  folly  of  all  pur- 
suits ;  the  insipidity  of  all  life ;  the  hollowness  of  all  love ;  the 
faithlessness  in  all  ties;  the  disbelief  in  all  worth;  these  conse- 
quences of  a  dissipated  existence  on  a  thoughtful  mind  produce 
some  remarkable,  while  they  make  so  many  wretched,  characters. 
They  colored  some  of  the  most  attractive  prose  among  the  French, 
and  the  most  fascinating  verse  in  the  pages  of  Byron.  It  might  be 
asked,  by  a  profane  inquirer  (and  I  have  touched  on  this  before), 
what  effect  a  life  nearly  similar — a  life  of  luxury,  indolence,  lassi- 
tude, profuse,  but  heartless  love — imparted  to  the  deep  and  touch- 
ing wisdom  in  his  page,  whom  we  consider  the  wisest  of  men, 
and  who  has  left  us  the  most  melancholy  of  doctrines  ? 

It  was  this  turn  of  mind  that  made  Saville's  conversation  pecu- 
liarly agreeable  to  Godolphin  in  his  present  humor ;  and  the  lat- 
ter invested  it,  from  his  own  mood,  with  a  charm  which  in  reality 
it  wanted.  For,  as  I  shall  show,  in  Godolphin,  what  deteriora- 
tion the  habits  of  frivolous  and  worldly  life  produce  on  the  mind 
of  a  man  of  genius,  I  show  only  in  Saville  the  effect  they  produce 
on  a  man  of  sense. 

"Well,  Godolphin,"  said  Saville,  as  he  saw  the  former  rise  to 
depart ;  "  you  will  at  least  dine  with  me  to-day — a  punctual  eight. 
I  think  I  can  promise  you  an  agreeable  evening.  The  Linettini, 
and  that  dear  little  Fanny  Millinger  (your  old  flame),  are  com- 
ing; and  I  have  asked  old  Stracey,  the  poet,  to  say  bons  mots  for 
them.  Poor  old  Stracey !  He  goes  about  to  all  his  former 
friends  and  fellow-liberals,  boasting  of  his  favor  with  the  Great, 
and  does  not  see  that  we  only  use  him  as  we  would  a  puppet-show 
or  a  dancing-dog." 

"  What  folly,"  said  Godolphin,  "it  is  in  any  man  of  genius  (not 
also  of  birth)  to  think  the  Great  of  this  country  can  possibly  es- 
teem him.  Nothing  can  equal  the  secret  enmity  with  which  dull 
men  regard  an  intellect  above  their  comprehension.  Party  poli- 
tics, and  the  tact,  the  shifting,  the  commonplace  that  Party 
politics,  alone  require ;  these  they  can  appreciate  ;  and  they  feel 
respect  for  an  orator,  even  though  he  be  not  a  county  member  ; 
for  he  can  assist  them  in  their  paltry  ambition  for  place  and  pen- 
sion :  but  an  author,  or  a  man  of  science,  the  rogues  positively 
jeer  at  him  !  " 

"And  yet,"  said  Saville,  "how  tew  men  of  letters  perceive  a 


GODOLPHIN.  85 

truth  so  evident  to  us,  so  hackneyed  even  in  the  conversations  of 
society  !  For  a  little  reputation  at  a  dinner-table,  for  a  coaxing 
note  from  some  titled  demirep  affecting  the  De  Stael,  they  forget 
not  only  to  be  glorious  but  even  to  be  respectable.  And  this,  too, 
not  only  for  so  pretty  a  gratification,  but  for  one  that  rarely  lasts 
above  a  London  season.  We  allow  the  low-born  author  to  be  the 
lion  this  year ;  but  we  dub  him  a  bore  the  next.  We  shut  our 
doors  upon  his  twice-told  jests,  and  send  for  the  Prague  minstrels 
to  sing  to  us  after  dinner  instead." 

''However,"  said  Godolphin,  "  it  is  only  poets  you  find  so 
foolish  as  to  be  deceived  by  you.  There  is  not  a  single  prose 
writer  of  real  genius  so  absurd." 

"And  why  is  that?" 

"Because,"  replied  Godolphin,  philosophizing,  "  poets  address 
themselves  more  to  women  than  to  men  ;  and  insensibly  they  ac- 
quire the  weaknesses  which  they  are  accustomed  to  address.  A 
poet  whose  verses  delight  the  women  will  be  found,  if  we  closely 
analyze  his  character,  to  be  very  like  a  woman  himself." 

"  You  don't  love  poets?  "  said  Saville. 

' '  The  glory  of  old  has  departed  from  them.  I  mean  less  from 
their  pages  than  their  minds.  We  have  plenty  of  beautiful  poets, 
but  how  little  poetry  breathing  of  a  great  soul !  " 

Here  the  door  opened,  and  a  Mr.  Glosson  was  announced. 
There  entered  a  little,  smirking,  neat-dressed  man,  prim  as  a  law- 
yer or  a  house-agent. 

"  Ah,  Glosson,  is  that  you?  "  said  Saville,  with  something  like 
animation:  "sit  down,  my  good  sir,  sit  down.  Well!  well! 
(rubbing  his  hands)  what  news  ?  what  news?  " 

"  Why,  Mr.  Saville,  I  think  we  may  get  the  land  from  old . 

He  has  the  right  of  \\\Qjob.  I  have  been  with  him  all  this  morn- 
ing. He  asks  six  thousand  pounds  for  it." 

"  The  unconscionable  dog  !  He  got  it  from  the  Crown  for 
two." 

"Ah,  very  true,  very  true:  but  you  don't  see,  sir,  you  don't 
see,  that  it  is  well  worth  nine.  Sad  times,  sad  times :  jobs  from 
the  Crown  are  growing  scarcer  every  day,  Mr.  Saville." 

"  Humph  !  that's  all  a  chance,  a  speculation.  Times  are  bad, 
indeed,  as  you  say:  no  money  in  the  market.  Go,  Glosson; 
offer  him  five — your  percentage  shall  be  one  per  cent,  higher  than 
if  I  pay  six  thousand,  and  shall  be  counted  up  to  the  latter  sum." 

"He!  he!  he!  sir!"  grinned  Glosson:  "you  are  fond  of 
your  joke,  Mr.  Saville." 

"Well,  now;  what  else  in  the  market?     Never    mind   my 


86  GODOLPHIX. 

friend  :  Mr.  Godolphin — Mr.  Glosson ;  now  all  gene  is  over ;  pro- 
ceed,— proceed. ' ' 

Glosson  hummed,  and  bowed,  and  hummed  again,  and  then 
glided  on  to  speak  of  houses,  and  crown  lands,  and  properties  in 
Wales,  and  places  at  court  (for  some  of  the  subordinate  posts  at  the 
palace  were  then — perhaps  are  now — regular  matter  of  barter);  and 
Saville,  bending  over  the  table,  with  his  thin,  delicate  hands  clasped 
intently,  and  his  brow  denoting  his  interest,  and  his  sharp  shrewd 
eye  fixed  on  the  agent,  furnished  to  the  contemplative  Godclphin 
a  picture  which  he  did  not  fail  to  note,  to  moralize  on,  to 
despise ! 

What  a  spectacle  is  that  of  the  prodigal  rake,  hardening  and 
sharpening  into  the  grasping  speculator  ! 

CHAPTER  XX. 

FANNY  MILLINGER  ONCE  MORE. — LOVE. — WOMAN. BOOKS. — A  HUN- 
DRED TOPICS  TOUCHED  ON  THE  SURFACE. — GODOLPHIN'S  STATE 
OF  MIND  MORE  MINUTELY  EXAMINED. — THE  DINNER  AT 
SAVILLE'S. 

GODOLPHIN  went  in  to  see  and  converse  with  Fanny  Millinger. 
She  was  still  unmarried,  and  still  the  fashion.  There  was  a  sort 
of  allegory  of  real  life  in  the  manner  in  which,  at  certain  epochs, 
our  Idealist  was  brought  into  contact  Avith  the  fair  actress  of  ideal 
creations.  There  was,  in  short,  something  of  a  moral  in  the 
way  these  two  streams  of  existence — the  one  belonging  to  the 
Actual,  the  ether  to  the  Imaginary — flowed  on,  crossing  each 
other  at  stated  times.  Which  was  the  mere  really  imaginative, 
the  life  of  the  stage,  or  that  of  the  world's  stage? 

The  gay  Fanny  was  rejoiced  to  welcome  back  again  her  early  lover. 
She  ran  on,  talking  of  a  thousand  topics,  without  remarking  the 
absent  mind  and  musing  eye  of  Godolphin,  till  he  himself  stop- 
ped her  somewhat  abruptly : 

"  Well,  Fanny,  well,  and  what  do  you  know  of  Saville?  You 
have  grown  intimate  with  him,  eh  ?  We  shall  meet  at  his  house 
this  evening." 

"  Oh,  yes,  he  is  a  charming  person  in  his  little  way ;  and  the 
only  man  who  allows  me  to  be  a  friend  without  dreaming  of 
becoming  a  lover.  Now  that's  what  I  like.  We  poor  actresses 
have  so  much  would-be  love  in  the  course  of  our  lives,  that  a 
little  friendship  now  and  then  is  a  novelty  which  other  and 
soberer  people  can  never  appreciate.  On  reading  '  Gil  Bias '  the 
other  day — I  am  no  great  reader,  as  you  may  remember — I  was 


(JODOLPHIN.  87 

struck  by  that  part  in  which  the  dear  Santillane  assures  us  that 
there  was  never  any  love  between  him  and  Laura  the  actress.  I 
thought  it  so  true  to  nature,  so  probable,  that  they  should  have 
formed  so  strong  an  intimacy  for  each  other,  lived  in  the  same 
house,  had  every  opportunity  for  love,  yet  never  loved.  And  it 
was  exactly  because  she  was  an  actress,  and  a  light  good-for- 
nothing  creature,  that  it  so  happened ;  the  very  multiplicity  of 
lovers  prevented  her  falling  in  love;  the  very  carelessness  of  her 
life,  poor  girl,  rendered  a  friend  so  charming  to  her.  It  would 
have  spoiled  the  friend  to  have  made  him  an  adorer;  it  would 
have  turned  the  rarity  into  the  everyday  character.  Now,  so  it 
is  with  me  and  Saville ;  I  like  his  wit,  he  likes  my  good  temper. 
We  see  each  other  as  often  as  if  we  were  in  love ;  and  yet  I  do 
not  believe  it  even  possible  that  he  should  ever  kiss  my  hand. 
"After  all,"  continued  Fanny,  laughing,  "love  is  not  so  necessary 
to  us  women  as  people  think.  Fine  writers  say,  '  Oh,  men  have 
a  thousand  objects,  women  but  one  !  '  That's  nonsense,  dear 
Percy ;  women  have  their  thousand  objects  too.  They  have  not 
the  bar,  but  they  have  the  milliner's  shop;  they  can't  fight,  but 
they  can  sit  by  the  window  and  embroider  a  work-bag ;  they 
don't  rush  into  politics,  but  they  plunge  their  souls  into  love  for  a 
parrot  or  a  lap-dog.  Don't  let  men  flatter  themselves;  Provi- 
dence has  been  just  as  kind  in  that  respect  to  one  sex  as  to  the 
other ;  our  objects  are  small,  yours  great ;  but  a  small  object  may 
occupy  the  mind  just  as  much  as  the  loftiest." 

"  Ours  great !  pshaw  !  "  said  Godolphin,  who  was  rather  struck 
with  Fanny's  remarks ;  "  there  is  nothing  great  in  those  profes- 
sions which  man  is  pleased  to  extol.  Is  selfishness  great  ?  Are 
the  low  trickery,  the  organized  lies,  of  the  bar,  a  great  calling  ? 
Is  the  mechanical  slavery  of  the  soldier — fighting  because  he  is  in 
the  way  of  the  fighting,  without  knowing  the  cause,  without  an 
object,  save  a  dim,  foolish  vanity  which  he  calls  glory,  and  can- 
not analyze — is  that  a  great  aim  and  vocation  ?  Well :  the 
senate !  look  at  the  outcry  which  wise  men  make  against  the 
loathsome  corruption  of  that  arena ;  then  look  at  the  dull  hours, 
the  tedious  talk,  the  empty  boasts,  the  poor  and  flat  rewards,  and 
tell  me  where  is  the  greatness  ?  No,  Fanny !  the  embroidered 
work-bag,  and  the  petted  parrot,  afford  just  as  great — morally 
great — occupations  as  those  of  the  bar,  the  army,  the  senate.  It 
is  only  the  frivolous  who  talk  of  frivolties  :  there  is  nothing  frivo- 
lous :  all  earthly  occupations  are  on  a  par,  alike  important  if  they 
alike  occupy ;  for  to  the  wise  all  are  poor  and  valueless." 

"I  fancy  you  are  very  wrong,"  said  the  actress,  pressing  her 
pretty  fingers  to  her  forehead,  as  if  to  understand  him;  "but  I 


00  GODOLPHIN. 

cannot  tell  you  why,  and  I  never  argue.  I  ramble  on  in  my  odd 
way,  casting  out  my  shrewd  things  without  defending  them,  if 
any  one  chooses  to  quarrel  with  them.  What  I  do  I  let  others 
do.  My  maxim  in  talk  is  my  maxim  in  life.  I  claim  liberty  for 
myself,  and  give  indulgence  to  others." 

"I  see,"  said  Godolphin,  "that  you  have  plenty  of  books 
about  you,  though  you  plead  not  guilty  to  reading.  Do  you 
learn  your  philosophy  from  them?  For  I  think  you  have  con- 
tracted a  vein  of  reflection  since  we  parted,  which  I  scarcely 
recognize  as  an  old  characteristic." 

"Why,"  answered  Fanny,  "though  I  don't  read,  I  skim. 
Sometimes  I  canter  through  a  dozen  novels  in  a  morning.  I  am 
disappointed,  I  confess.,  in  all  these  works.  I  want  to  see  more 
real  knowledge  of  the  world  than  they  ever  display.  They  tell 
us  how  Lord  Arthur  looked,  and  Lady  Lucy  dressed,  and  what 
was  the  color  of  those  curtains,  and  these  eyes,  and  so  forth  :  and 
then  the  better  sort,  perhaps,  do  also  tell  us  what  the  heroine  felt 
as  well  as  wore,  and  try  with  might  and  main  to  pull  some  string 
of  the  internal  machine;  but  still  I  am  not  enlightened,  not 
touched.  I  don't  recognize  men  and  women ;  they  are  puppets 
with  holiday  phrases :  and  I  tell  you  what,  Percy,  these  novelists 
make  the  last  mistake  you  would  suppose  them  guilty  of;  they 
have  not  romance  enough  in  them  to  paint  the  truths  of  society. 
Old  gentlemen  say  novels  are  bad  teachers  of  life,  because  they 
make  it  too  ideal ;  quite  the  reverse :  novels  are  too  trite !  too 
superficial  !  their  very  talk  about  love,  and  the  fuss  they  make 
about  it,  show  how  shallow  real  romance  is  with  them ;  for  they 
say  nothing  new  on  it,  and  real  romance  is  forever  striking  out 
new  thoughts.  Am  I  not  right,  Percy?  No  !  life,  be  it  worldly 
as  it  may,  has  a  vast  deal  of  romance  in  it.  Every  one  of  us 
(even  poor  I)  have  a  mine  of  thoughts,  and  fancies,  and  wishes, 
that  books  are  too  dull  and  common-place  to  reach  :  the  heart  is 
a  romance  in  itself." 

"A  philosophical  romance,  my  Fanny;  full  of  mysteries  and 
conceits,  and  refinements,  mixed  up  with  its  deeper  passages.  But 
how  came  you  so  wise?  " 

"Thank  you!"  answered  Fanny,  with  a  profound  curtsey. 
"The  fact  is — though  you,  as  in  duty  bound,  don't  perceive 
it — that  I  am  older  than  I  was  when  we  last  met.  I  reflect  where 

1  then  felt.     Besides,  the  stage  fills  our  heads  with  a  half  sort  of 
wisdom,  and  gives  us  that  strange  melange  of  shrewd   experience 
and  romantic  notions  which  is,  in  fact,  the  real  representation  of 
nine  human  hearts  out  of  ten.     Talking  of  books,  I  want  some 
one  to  write  a  novel,   which  shall  be  a  metaphysical  Gil   Bias ; 


GODOLPHIN.  89 

which  shall  deal  more  with  the  mind  than  Le  Sage's  book,  and 
less  with  the  actions ;  which  shall  make  its  hero  the  creature  of 
the  world,  but  a  different  creation,  though  equally  true ;  which 
shall  give  a  faithful  picture  in  the  character  of  one  man  of  the 
aspect  and  the  effects  of  our  social  system ;  making  that  man  of 
a  better  sort  of  clay  than  the  amusing  lacquey  was,  and  the  pro- 
duct of  a  more  artificial  grade  of  society.  The  book  I  mean 
would  be  a  sadder  one  than  Le  Sage's,  but  equally  faithful  to  life." 

' '  And  it  would  have  more  of  romance,  if  I  rightly  understand 
what  you  mean?  " 

"  Precisely  :  romance  of  idea  as  well  as  incident — natural  ro- 
mance. By  the  way,  how  few  know  what  natural  romance  is  :  so 
that  you  feel  the  ideas  in  a  book  or  play  are  true  and  faithful  to 
the  characters  they  are  ascribed  to,  why  mind  whether  the  inci- 
dents are  probable  ?  Yet  common  readers  only  go  by  the  inci- 
dents; as  if  the  incidents  in  three-fourths  of  Shakspeare's  plays 
were  even  ordinarily  possible  !  But  people  have  so  little  nature 
in  them,  that  they  don't  know  what  is  natural !  " 

Thus  Fanny  ran  on,  in  no  very  connected  manner;  stringing 
together  those  remarks  which,  unless  I  am  mistaken,  show  how 
much  better  an  uneducated,  clever  girl,  whose  very  nature  is  a 
quick  perception  of  art,  can  play  the  critic,  than  the  pedants  who 
assume  the  office. 

But  it  was  only  for  the  moment  that  the  heavy  heart  of  Godol- 
phin  forgot  its  load.  It  was  in  vain  that  he  sought  to  be  amused 
while  yet  smarting  under  the  freshness  of  regret.  A  great  shock 
had  been  given  to  his  nature ;  he  had  loved  against  his  will ;  and 
as  we  have  seen,  on  his  return  to  the  Priory,  he  had  even  resolved 
on  curing  himself  of  a  passion  so  unprofitable  and  unwise.  But 
the  jealousy  of  a  night  had  shivered  into  dust  a  prudence  which 
never  of  right  belonged  to  a  very  ardent  and  generous  nature  •. 
that  jealousy  was  soothed,  allayed ;  but  how  fierce,  how  stunning 
was  the  blow  that  succeeded  it !  Constance  had  confessed  love, 
and  yet  had  refused  him — forever  !  Clear  and  noble  as  to  herself 
her  motives  might  seem  in  that  refusal,  it  was  impossible  that  they 
should  appear  in  the  same  light  to  Godolphin.  Unable  to  pene- 
trate into  the  effect  which  her  father's  death-bed  and  her  own  oath 
had  produced  on  the  mind  of  Constance ;  how  indissolubly  that 
remembrance  had  united  itself  with  all  her  schemes  and  prospects 
for  the  future ;  how  marvellously,  yet  how  naturally,  it  had  con- 
verted worldly  ambition  into  a  sacred  duty ;  unable,  I  say,  to 
comprehend  all  these  various,  and  powerful,  and  governing  mo- 
tives, Godolphin  beheld  in  her  refusal  only  the  aversion  to  share 
his  slender  income,  and  the  desire  for  loftier  station.  He  con- 


pO  GODOLPHIN. 

sidered,  therefore,  that  sorrow  was  a  tribute  to  her  unworthy  of 
himself;  he  deemed  it  a  part  of  his  dignity  to  strive  to  forget. 
That  hallowed  sentiment  which,  in  some  losses  of  the  heart,  makes 
it  a  duty  to  remember,  and  preaches  a  soothing  and  soft  lesson 
from  the  very  text  of  regret,  was  not  for  the  wrung  and  stricken 
soul  of  Godolphin.  He  only  strove  to  dissipate  his  grief,  and 
shut  out  from  his  mental  sight  the  charmed  vision  of  the  first,  the 
only  woman  he  had  deeply  loved. 

Godolphin  felt,  too,  that  the  sole  impulse  which  could  have 
united  the  fast-expiring  energy  and  enterprise  of  his  youth  to  the 
ambition  of  life  was  forever  gone.  With  Constance — with  the 
proud  thoughts  that  belonged  to  her — the  aspirings  after  earthly 
honors  were  linked,  and  with  her  were  broken.  He  felt  his  old 
philosophy — the  love  of  ease,  the  profound  contempt  of  fame, — 
close  like  deep  waters  over  those  glittering  hosts  for  whose  pass- 
age they  had  been  severed  for  a  moment,  whelming  the  crested 
and  gorgeous  visions  forever  beneath  the  wave !  Conscious  of 
his  talents — nay,  swayed  to  and  fro  by  the  unquiet  stirrings  of  no 
common  genius — Godolphin  yet  foresaw  that  he  was  not  henceforth 
destined  to  play  a  shining  part  in  the  crowded  drama  of  life. 
His  career  was  already  closed  ;  he  might  be  contented,  prosper- 
ous, happy ;  but  never  great.  He  had  seen  enough  of  authors, 
and  of  the  thorns  that  beset  the  paths  of  literature,  to  experience 
none  of  those  delusions  which  cheat  the  blinded  aspirer  into  the 
wilderness  of  publication — that  mode  of  obtaining  fame  and 
hatred  to  which  those  who  feel  unfitted  for  more  bustling  con- 
cerns are  impelled.  Write  he  might :  and  he  was  fond  (  as 
disappointment  increased  his  propensities  to  dreaming  )  of 
brightening  his  solitude  with  the  golden  palaces  and  winged 
shapes  that  lie  glassed  within  the  fancy,  the  soul's  fairy-land. 
But  the  vision  with  him  was  only  evoked  one  hour  to  be  de- 
stroyed the  next.  Happy  had  it  been  for  Godolphin,  and  not 
unfortunate  perhaps  for  the  world,  had  he  learned  at  that  exact 
moment  the  true  motive  for  human  action  which  he  afterwards, 
and  too  late,  discovered.  Happy  had  it  been  for  him  to  have 
learned  that  there  is  an  ambition  to  do  good  ;  an  ambition  to 
raise  the  wretched  as  well  as  to  rise. 

Alas  !  either  in  letters  or  in  politics,  how  utterly  poor,  barren, 
and  untempting,  is  every  path  that  points  upward  to  the  mockery 
of  public  eminence,  when  looked  upon  by  a  soul  that  has  any 
real  elements  of  wise  or  noble;  unless  we  have  an  impulse  within, 
which  mortification  chills  not — a  reward  without,  which  selfish 
defeat  does  not  destroy. 

But,  unblest  by  one  friend   really  wise  or  good,  spoilt  by  the 


GODOLPHIN.  ()t 

world,  soured  by  disappointment,  Godolphin's  very  faculties 
made  him  inert,  and  his  very  wisdom  taught  him  to  be  useless. 
Again  and  again — as  the  spider  in  some  cell  where  no  winged 
insect  never  wanders,  builds  and  rebuilds  his  mesh — the  schem- 
ing heart  of  the  Idealist  was  doomed  to  weave  net  after  net  for 
those  visions  of  the  Lovely  and  the  Perfect  which  never  can  de- 
scend to  the  gloomy  regions  wherein  mortality  is  cast.  The  most 
common  disease  to  genius  is  nympholepsy — the  saddening  for  a 
spirit  that  the  world  knows  not.  Ah  !  how  those  outward  dis- 
appointments which  should  cure,  only  feed  the  disease  ! 

The  dinner  at  Saville's  was  gay  and  lively,  as  such  entertain 
ments  with  such  participators  usually  are.  If  nothing  in  the 
world  is  more  heavy  than  your  formal  banquet,  nothing,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  more  agreeable  than  those  well-chosen  laissez  aller 
feasts  at  which  the  guests  are  as  happily  selected  as  the  wines  ; 
where  there  is  no  form,  no  reserve,  no  effort ;  and  people,  having 
met  to  sit  still  for  a  few  hours,  are  willing  to  be  as  pleasant  to 
each  other  as  if  they  were  never  to  meet  again.  Yet  the  conver- 
sation in  all  companies  not  literary  turns  upon  persons  rather  than 
things ;  and  your  wits  learn  their  art  only  in  the  School  for  Scan- 
dal. 

"Only  think,  Fanny,"  said  Saville,  "of  Clavers  turning  beau 
in  his  old  age  !  He  commenced  with  being  a  jockey ;  then  he 
became  an  electioneerer ;  then  a  Methodist  parson ;  then  a  builder 
of  houses ;  and  now  he  has  dashed  suddenly  up  to  London, 
rushed  into  the  clubs,  mounted  a  wig,  studied  an  ogle,  and  walks 
about  the  Opera  House  swinging  a  cane,  and,  at  the  age  of  fifty-six, 
punching  young  minors  in  the  side,  and  saying  tremulously,  '  We 
young  fellows  ! '  " 

' '  He  hires  pages  to  come  to  him  in  the  Park  with  three-cornered 
notes,"  said  Fanny;  "  he  opens  each  with  affected  nonchalance; 
looks  full  at  the  bearer ;  and  cries  aloud :  '  Tell  your  mistress  I 
cannot  refuse  her ; '  then  canters  off,  with  the  air  of  a  man  perse- 
cuted to  death!  " 

"  But  did  you  see  what  an  immense  pair  of  whiskers  Chester 
has  mounted?" 

"Yes,"  answered  a  Mr.  De  Lacy ;  "  A says  he  has  culti- 
vated them  in  order  to  '  plant  out '  his  ugliness." 

"  But  vy  you  no  talk,  Monsieur  de  Dauphin? "  said  the  Linet- 
tini  gently :  turning  to  Percy ;  "  you  ver  silent." 

"  Unhappily,  I  have  been  so  long  out  of  town,  that  these  anec- 
dotes of  the  day  are  caviare  to  me." 

"But  so,"  cried  Saville,  "  would  a  volume  of  French  Memoirs 
be  to  any  one  that  took  it  up  for  the  first  time ;  yet  the  French 


02  GODOLPHIN. 

Memoirs  amuse  one  exactly  as  much  as  if  one  had  lived  with  the 
persons  written  of.  Now  that  ought  to  be  the  case  with  conver- 
sations upon  persons.  I  flatter  myself,  Fanny,  that  you  and  I  hit 
off  characters  so  well  by  a  word  or  two,  that  no  one  who  hears  us 
wants  to  know  anything  more  about  them." 

"I  believe  you,"  said  Godolphin;  "  and  that  is  the  reason  you 
never  talk  of  yourselves. ' ' 

"Bah!  Apropos  of  egoism,  did  you  meet  Jack  Barabel  in 
Rome?" 

"  Yes,  writing  his  travels.  '  Pray,'  said  he  to  me  (seizing  me  by 
the  button)  in  the  Coliseum,  '  What  do  you  think  is  the  highest 
order  of  literary  composition?  '  Why,  an  epic,  I  fancy,'  said  I ; 
'  or  perhaps  a  tragedy,  or  a  great  history,  or  a  novel  like  Don 
Quixote.'1  'Pooh!  '  quoth  Barabel,  looking  important,  'there's 
nothing  so  high  in  literature  as  a  good  book  of  travels; '  then 
sinking  his  voice  into  a  whisper,  and  laying  his  finger  wisely  on 
his  nose,  he  hissed  out,  '  /have  a  quarto,  sir,  in  the  press  ! '  " 

"Ha!  ha  !  "  laughed  Stracey,  the  old  wit,  picking  his  teeth, 
and  speaking  for  the  first  time;  "if  you  tell  Barabel  you  have 
seen  a  handsome  woman,  he  says,  mysteriously  frowning,  '  Hand- 
some, sir  !  has  she  travelled?  Answer  me  that ! '  ' 

"  But  have  you  seen  Paulton's  new  equipage  ?  Brown  carriage, 
brown  liveries,  brown  harness,  brown  horses,  while  Paulton  and 
his  wife  sit  within  dressed  in  brown,  cap-a-pie.  The  best  of  it  is 
that  Paulton  went  to  his  coachmaker  to  order  his  carriage,  saying, 
'  Mr.  Houlditch,  I  am  growing  old — too  old  to  be  eccentric  any 
longer ;  I  must  have  something  remarkably  plain ; '  and  to  this 
hour  Paulton  goes  brown-ing  about  the  town,  crying  out  to  every 
one,  '  Nothing  like  simplicity,  believe  me.' ' 

"  He  discharged  his  coachman  for  wearing  white  gloves  instead 
of  brown,"  said  Stracey.  "  'What  do  you  mean  sir,'  cried  he, 
'with  your  d — d  showy  vulgarities?  Don't  you  see  me  toiling 
my  soul  out  to  be  plain  and  quiet,  and  you  must  spoil  all,  by  not 
being  brown  enough  ! '  " 

"Ah,  Godolphin,  you  seem  pensive,"  whispered  Fanny ;  "  yet 
we  are  tolerably  amusing,  too." 

"My  dear  Fanny,"  answered  Godolphin,  rousing  himself, 
"  the  dialogue  is  gay,  the  actors  know  their  parts,  the  lights  are 
brilliant ;  but — the  scene — the  scene  cannot  shift  for  me  !  Call 
it  what  you  will,  I  am  not  deceived.  I  see  the  paint  and  the  can- 
vas, but — and  yet,  away  these  thoughts  !  Shall  I  fill  your  glass, 
Fanny?" 


GODOLPHIN.  93 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

AN    EVENT   OF   GREAT  IMPORTANCE  TO   THE   PRINCIPAL  ACTORS   IN 
THIS   HISTORY. — GODOLPHIN   A   SECOND   TIME   LEAVES   ENGLAND. 

GODOLPHIN  was  welcomed  with  enthusiasm  by  the  London 
world.  His  graces,  his  manners,  his  genius,  his  bon  ton,  and  his 
bonnes  fortunes ,  were  the  theme  of  every  society.  Verses  imputed 
to  him — some  erroneously,  some  truly — were  mysteriously  circu- 
lated from  hand  to  hand ;  and  every  one  envied  the  fair  inspirers 
to  whom  they  were  supposed  to  be  addressed. 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  reiterate  the  wearisome  echo  of  novel- 
ists, who  descant  on  fashion  and  term  it  life.  No  description  of 
rose-colored  curtains  and  buhl  cabinets ;  no  miniature  paintings 
of  boudoirs  and  salons;  no  recital  of  conventional  insipidities, 
interlarded  with  affected  criticisms,  and  honored  by  the  name  of 
dramatic  dialogue,  shall  lend  their  fascination  to  these  pages. 
Far  other  and  far  deeper  aims  are  mine  in  stooping  to  delineate 
the  customs  and  springs  of  polite  life.  The  reader  must  give 
himself  wholly  up  to  me ;  he  must  prepare  to  go  with  me  through 
the  grave  as  through  the  gay,  and  unresistingly  to  thread  the  dark 
and  subtle  interest  which  alone  I  can  impart  to  these  memoirs,  or 
,— let  him  close  the  book  at  once.  I  promise  him  novelty ;  but  it 
is  not,  when  duly  scanned,  a  novelty  of  light  and  frivolous  cast. 

But  throughout  that  routine  of  dissipation  in  which  he  chased 
the  phantom  Forgetfulness,  Godolphin  sighed  for  the  time  he  had 
fixed  on  for  leaving  the  scenes  in  which  it  was  pursued.  Of  Con- 
stance's present  existence  he  heard  nothing ;  of  her  former  tri- 
umphs and  conquests  he  heard  everywhere.  And  when  did  he 
ever  meet  one  face,  however  fair,  which  could  awaken  a  single 
thought  of  admiration,  while  hers  was  yet  all  faithfully  glassed  in 
his  remembrance  ?  I  know  nothing  that  so  utterly  converts  society 
into  "  the  gallery  of  pictures,"  as  the  recollection  of  one  loved 
and  lost.  That  recollection  has  but  two  cures — Time  and  the 
Hermitage.  Foreigners  impute  to  us  the  turn  for  sentiment ; 
alas  !  there  are  no  people  who  have  it  less.  We  seek  forever  after 
amusement ;  and  there  is  not  one  popular  prose-book  in  our  lan- 
guage in  which  the  more  tender  and  yearning  secrets  of  the  heart 
form  the  subject  matter.  The  "  Corinne"  and  the  "Julia"  weary 
us,  or  we  turn  them  into  sorry  jests ! 

One  evening,  a  little  before  his  departure  from  England — that 
a  lingering  and  vague  hope,  of  which  Constance  was  the  object, 
had  considerably  protracted  beyond  the  allotted  time — Godolphin 


94  GODOLPHIN. 

was  at  a  house  in  which  the  hostess  was  a  relation  to  Lord  Erp- 
ingham. 

"Have  you  heard,"  asked  Lady  G ,  "  that  my  cousin  Erp- 

ingharn  is  to  be  married  ? ' ' 

"No,  indeed;  to  whom?"  said  Godolphin,  eagerly. 

"To  Miss  Vernon." 

Sudden  as  was  the  shock,  Godolphin  heard,  and  changed  neither 
hue  nor  muscle. 

"  Are  you  certain  of  this?  "  asked  a  lady  present. 

"Quite:  Lady  Erpingham  is  my  authority;  I  received  the 
news  from  herself  this  very  day." 

"And  does  she  seem  pleased  with  the  match  ?  " 

"Why,  I  can  scarcely  say,  for  the  letter  contradicts  itself  in 
every  passage.  Now,  she  congratulates  herself  on  having  so 
charming  a  daughter-in-law ;  now,  she  suddenly  stops  short  to 
observe  what  a  pity  it  is  that  young  men  should  be  so  precipitate  ! 
Now,  she  says  what  a  great  match  it  will  be  for  her  dear  ward  ! 
and  now,  what  a  happy  one  it  will  be  for  Erpingham !  In 
short,  she  does  not  know  whether  to  be  pleased  or  vexed ;  and 
that,  pour  dire  vrai,  is  my  case  also." 

"Why,  indeed,"  observed  the  former  speaker,  "  Miss  Vernon 
has  played  her  cards  well.  Lord  Erpingham  would  have  been  a 
a  great  match  in  himself,  with  his  person  and  reputation.  Ah  ! 
she  was  always  an  ambitious  girl." 

"  And  a  proud  one,"  said  Lady  G .  "Well,  I  suppose 

Erpingham  House  will  be  the  rendezvous  to  all  the  blues,  and 
wits,  and  savans.  Miss  Vernon  is  another  Aspasia,  I  hear." 

"  I  hate  girls  who  are  so  designing,"  said  the  lady  who  spoke 
before,  and  had  only  one  daughter,  very  ugly,  who,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-five,  was  about  to  accept  her  first  offer,  and  marry  a 
younger  son  in  the  Guards.  "I  think  she's  rather  vulgar ;  for 
my  part.  I  doubt  if — I  shall  patronize  her." 

"Well,  what  ^Q  you  think  of  it,  Mr.  Godolphin  !  You  have 
seen  Miss  Vernon?  " 

Godolphin  was  gone. 

It  was  about  ten  days  after  this  conversation  that  Godolphin, 
waiting  at  a  hotel  in  Dover,  the  hour  at  which  the  packet  set  sail 
for  Calais,  took  up  the  Morning  Post;  and  the  first  passage  that 
met  his  eye,  was  the  one  which  I  transcribe  : 

"  Marriage  in  High  Life. — On  Thursday  last,  at  Wendover 
Castle,  the  Earl  of  Erpingham,  to  Constance,  the  only  daughter 

of  the  celebrated  Mr.  Vernon.  The  bride  was  dressed,  etc. " 

And  then  followed  the  trite,  yet  pompous  pageantry  of  words — 


GODOLPHIN.  g$ 

the  sounding  nothings — with  which  ladies  who  become  countesses 
are  knelled  into  marriage. 

"The  dream  is  over !"  said  Godolphin  mournfully,  as  the 
paper  fell  to  the  ground  ;  and,  burying  his  face  within  his  hands, 
he  remained  motionless  till  they  came  to  announce  the  moment  of 
departure. 

And  thus  Percy  Godolphin  left,  for  the  second  time,  his  native 
shores.  When  we  return  to  him,  what  changes  with  the  feelings, 
now  awakened  within  him,  have  worked  in  his  character  ?  The 
drops  that  trickle  within  the  cavern  harden,  yet  brighten  into 
spars  as  they  indurate.  Nothing  is  more  polished,  nothing  more 
cold,  than  that  wisdom  which  is  the  work  of  former  tears,  of  for- 
mer passions,  and  is  formed  within  a  musing  and  solitary  mind  ! 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  BRIDE  ALONE. — A  DIALOGUE  POLITICAL  AND  MATRIMONIAL. — 
CONSTANCE'S  GENIUS  FOR  DIPLOMACY. — THE  CHARACTER  OF  HER 
ASSEMBLIES. — HER  CONQUEST  OVER  LADY  DELVILLE. 

"BRING  me  that  book ;  place  that  table  nearer  ;  and  leave  me." 

The  Abigail  obeyed  the  orders,  and  the  young  Countess  of  Erp- 
ingham  was  alone.  Alone  !  What  a  word  for  a  young  and  beau- 
tiful bride  in  the  first  months  of  her  marriage !  Alone,  and  in 
the  heart  of  that  mighty  city  in  v/hich  rank  and  wealth — and  they 
were  hers — are  the  idols  adored  by  millions. 

It  was  a  room  fancifully  and  splendidly  decorated.  Flowers 
and  perfumes  were,  however,  its  chief  luxury ;  and  from  the  open 
window  you  might  see  the  trees,  in  the  old  Mall  deepening  into 
the  rich  verdure  of  June.  That  haunt,  too — a  classical  haunt  for 
London — was  at  the  hour  I  speak  of  full  of  gay  and  idle  life  ;  and 
there  was  something  fresh  and  joyous  in  the  air,  the  sun,  and  the 
crowd  of  foot  and  horse  that  swept  below. 

Was  the  glory  gone  from  your  brow,  Constance  ?  Or  the  proud 
gladness  from  your  eye  ?  Alas  !  are  not  the  blessings  of  the  world 
like  the  enchanted  bullets  ! — that  which  pierces  our  heart  is  united 
with  the  gift  which  our  heart  desired  ! 

Lord  Erpingham  entered  the  room.  "  Well,  Constance," 
said  he,  "shall  you  ride  on  horseback  to-day?  " 

"  I  think  not." 

"  Then  I  wish  you  would  call  on  Lady  Delville.  You  see,  Del- 
ville  is  of  my  party :  we  sit  together.  You  shall  be  very  civil  to 
her,  and  I  did  not  think  you  were  so  the  other  night," 


96  GODOLPHIN. 

'•'You  wish  Lady  Delville  to  support  your  political  interest; 
and,  if  I  mistake  not,  you  think  her  at  present  lukewarm?" 

"  Precisely." 

"  Then,  my  dear  lord,  will  you  place  confidence  in  my  discre- 
tion ?  I  promise  you,  if  you  will  leave  me  undisturbed  in  my 
own  plans,  that  Lady  Delville  shall  be  the  most  devoted  of  your 
party  before  the  season  is  half  over :  but  then,  the  means  will  not 
be  those  you  advise." 

"Why,  I  advised  none." 

' '  Yes — civility ;  a  very  poor  policy. ' ' 

"  D n  it,  Constance  !  Why  you  would  not  frown  a  great 

person  like  Lady  Delville  into  affection  for  us?  " 

"  Leave  it  to  me." 

"Nonsense !  " 

"  My  dear  lord,  only  try.  Three  months  is  all  I  ask.  You  will 
leave  the  management  of  politics  to  me  ever  afterwards  !  I  was 
born  a  schemer.  Am  I  not  John  Vernon's  daughter?  " 

"  Well,  well,  do  as  you  will !  "  said  Lord  Erpingham;  "  But  I 
see  how  it  will  end.  However,  you  will  call  on  Lady  Delville  to- 
day?" 

"  If  you  wish  it,  certainly." 

"I  do." 

Lady  Delville  was  a  proud,  great  lady;  not  very  much  liked, 
and  not  so  often  invited  by  her  equals  as  if  she  had  been  agree- 
able and  a  flirt. 

Constance  knew  with  whom  she  had  to  treat.  She  called  on 
Lady  Delville  that  day.  Lady  Delville  was  at  home :  a  pretty 
and  popular  Mrs.  Trevor  was  with  her. 

Lady  Delville  received  her  coolly ;  Constance  was  haughtiness 
itself. 

"  You  go  to  the  Duchess  of  Daubigny's to-night?  "  said  Lady 
Delville,  in  the  course  of  their  broken  conversation. 

"  Indeed,  I  do  not.  I  like  agreeable  society.  It  shall  be  my 
object  to  form  a  circle  that  not  one  displeasing  person  shall  obtain 
access  to.  Will  you  assist  me,  my  dear  Mrs.  Trevor  ? ' '  and  Con- 
stance turned,  with  her  softest  smile,  to  the  lady  she  addressed. 

Mrs.  Trevor  was  flattered  ;  Lady  Delville  drew  herself  up. 

"  It  is  a  small  party  at  the  duchess's,"  said  the  latter  ;  "  merely 
to  meet  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  C ." 

' '  Ah  !  few  people  are  capable  of  giving  a  suitable  entertain- 
ment to  the  royal  family." 

"  But  surely  none  more  so  than  the  Duchess  of  Daubigny  :  her 
house  so  large,  her  rank  so  great  !  " 

"These  are  but  poor  ingredients  towards  the  forming  of  an 


GODOLPHIN.  97 

agreeable  party,"  said  Constance,  coldly.  -''The  mistake  made 
by  common  minds  is,  to  suppose  titles  the  only  rank.  Royal 
dukes  love,  above  all  other  persons,  to  be  amused ;  and  amuse- 
ment is  the  last  thing  generally  provided  for  them." 

The  conversation  fell  into  other  channels.  Constance  rose  to 
depart.  She  warmly  pressed  the  hand  of  Mrs.  Trevor,  whom  she 
had  only  seen  once  before. 

"A  few  persons  come  to  me  to-morrow  evening,"  said  she; 
"  do  waive  ceremony,  and  join  us.  I  can  promise  you  that  not 
one  disagreeable  person  shall  be  present ;  and  that  the  Duchess  of 
Daubigny  shall  write  for  an  invitation,  and  be  refused." 

Mrs.  Trevor  accepted  the  invitation. 

Lady  Delville  was  enraged  beyond  measure.  Never  was  female 
tongue  more  bitter  than  hers  at  the  expense  of  that  insolent  Lady 
Erpingham  !  Yet  Lady  Delville  was  secretly  in  grief;  for  the 
first  time  in  her  life  she  was  hurt  at  not  having  been  asked  to  a 
party :  and  being  hurt  because  she  was  not  going,  she  longed 
most  eagerly  to  go. 

The  next  evening  came.  Erpingham  House  was  not  large,  but 
it  was  well  adapted  to  the  description  of  assembly  its  beautiful 
owner  had  invited.  Statues,  busts,  pictures,  books,  scattered  or 
arranged  about  the  apartments,  furnished  matter  for  intellectual 
conversation,  or  gave  at  least  an  intellectual  air  to  the  meeting. 

About  a  hundred  persons  were  present.  They  were  selected 
from  the  most  distinguished  ornaments  of  the  time.  Musicians, 
painters,  authors,  orators,  fine  gentlemen,  dukes,  princes,  and 
beauties.  One  thing,  however,  was  imperatively  necessary  in 
order  to  admit  them — the  profession  of  liberal  opinions.  No 
Tory,  however  wise,  eloquent,  or  beautiful,  could,  that  evening, 
have  obtained  the  sesame  to  those  apartments. 

Constance  never  seemed  more  lovely,  and  never  before  was  she 
so  winning.  The  coldness  and  the  arrogance  of  her  manner  were 
wholly  vanished.  To  every  one  she  spoke ;  and  to  every  one  her 
voice,  her  manner,  were  kind,  cordial,  familiar;  but  familiar  with 
a  soft  dignity  that  heightened  the  charm.  Ambitious  not  only  to 
please,  but  to  dazzle,  she  breathed  into  her  conversation  all  the 
grace  and  culture  of  her  mind.  They  who  admired  her  the 
most,  were  the  most  accomplished  themselves.  Now  exchanging 
with  foreign  nobles  that  brilliant  trifling  of  the  world  in  which 
there  is  often  so  much  penetration,  wisdom,  and  research  into 
character ;  now  with  a  kindling  eye  and  animated  cheek  com- 
menting, with  poets  and  critics,  on  literature  and  the  arts ;  now, 
in  a  more  remote  and  quiet  corner,  seriously  discussing,  with 
hoary  politicians,  those  affairs  in  which  even  they  allowed  her 
7 


98  GODOLPHIN. 

shrewdness  and  her  grasp  of  intellect ;  and  combining  with  every 
grace  and  every  accomplishment  a  rare  and  dazzling  order  of 
beauty — we  may  readily  imagine  the  sensation  she  created,  and 
the  sudden  and  novel  zest  which  so  splendid  an  Armida  must  have 
given  to  the  tameness  of  society. 

The  whole  of  the  next  week  the  party  at  Erpingham  House 
was  the  theme  of  every  conversation.  Each  person  who  had  been 
there  had  met  the  lion  he  had  been  most  anxious  to  see.  The 
beauty  had  conversed  with  the  poet,  who  had  charmed  her ;  the 
young  debutant  in  science  had  paid  homage  to  the  great  professor 
of  its  loftiest  mysteries  ;  the  statesman  had  thanked  the  author 
who  had  defended  his  measures  ;  the  author  had  been  delighted 
with  the  compliment  of  the  statesman.  Every  one  then  agreed 
that,  while  the  highest  rank  in  the  kingdom  had  been  there,  rank 
had  been  the  least  attraction ;  and  those  who  before  had  found 
Constance  repellent,  were  the  very  persons  who  now  expatiated 
with  the  greatest  rapture  on  the  sweetness  of  her  manners.  Then, 
too,  every  one  who  had  been  admitted  to  the  coterie  dwelt  on  the 
rarity  of  the  admission ;  and  thus,  all  the  world  were  dying  for 
an  introduction  to  Erpingham  House — partly,  because  it  was 
agreeable ;  principally,  because  it  was  difficult. 

It  soon  became  a  compliment  to  the  understanding  to  say  of  a 
person,  "  He  goes  to  Lady  Erpingham's  !  "  They  who  valued 
themselves  on  their  understandings  moved  heaven  and  earth  to 
become  popular  with  the  beautiful  Countess.  Lady  Delville  was 
not  asked  ;  Lady  Delville  was  furious  :  .she  affected  disdain,  but 
no  one  gave  her  credit  for  it.  Lord  Erpingham  teazed  Constance 
on  this  point. 

"You  see  I  was  right;  for  you  have  affronted  Lady  Delville. 
She  has  made  Delville  look  coolly  on  me ;  in  a  few  weeks  he  will 
be  a  Tory ;  think  of  that,  Lady  Erpingham  ! ' ' 

"  One  month  more,"  answered  Constance,  with  a  smile,  "and 
you  shall  see." 

One  night  Lady  Delville  and  Lady  Erpingham  met  at  a  large 
party.  The  latter  seated  herself  by  her  haughty  enemy:  not 
seeming  to  heed  Lady  Delville's  coolness,  Constance  entered  into 
conversation  with  her.  She  dwelt  upon  books,  pictures,  music  : 
her  manner  was  animated,  and  her  wit  playful.  Pleased,  in  spite 
of  herself,  Lady  Delville  warmed  from  her  reserve. 

"My  dear  Lady  Delville,"  said  Constance,  suddenly  turning 
her  bright  countenance  on  the  Countess  with  an  expression  of 
delighted  surprise;  "will  you  forgive  me?  I  never  dreamed 
before  that  you  were  so  charming  a  person  !  I  never  conceal  my 
sentiments :  and  I  own  with  regret  and  shame  that,  till  this  mom- 


GODOLPHIN.  99 

ent,  I  had  never  seen  in  your  mind — whatever  I  might  in  your 
person — those  claims  to  admiration  which  were  constantly  dinned 
into  my  ear." 

Lady  Delville  actually  colored. 

"Pray,"  continued  Constance,  "condescend  to  permit  me  to 
a  nearer  acquaintance.  Will  you  dine  with  us  on  Thursday  ?  we 
shall  have  only  nine  persons  besides  yourself:  but  they  are  the 
nine  persons  whom  I  most  esteem  and  admire." 

Lady  Delville  accepted  the  invitation.  From  that  hour,  Lady 
Delville — who  had  at  first  resented,  from  the  deepest  recess  of  her 
heart,  Constance  Vernon's  accession  to  rank  and  wealth  ;  who, 
had  Constance  deferred  to  her  early  acquaintance,  would  have 
always  found  something  in  her  she  could  have  affected  to  despise; 
from  that  hour,  Lady  Delville  was  the  warmest  advocate,  and,  a 
little  time  after,  the  sincerest  follower,  of  the  youthful  Countess. 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

AN  INSIGHT  INTO  THE  REAL  GRAND  MONDE — BEING  A  SEARCH  BEHIND 
THE  ROSE-COLORED  CURTAINS. 

THE  time  we  now  speak  of  was  the  most  brilliant  the  English 
world,  during  the  last  half  century,  has  known.  Lord  Byron 
was  in  his  brief  and  dazzling  zenith  ;  De  Stae'l  was  in  London; 
the  Peace  had  turned  the  attention  of  rich  idlers  to  social  enjoy- 
ment and  to  letters.  There  was  an  excitement,  and  a  brilliancy, 
and  a  spirituality,  about  our  circles,  which  we  do  not  recognize 
now.  Never  had  a  young  and  ambitious  woman — a  beauty  and 
a  genius — a  finer  moment  for  the  commencement  of  her  power. 
It  was  Constance's  early  and  bold  resolution  to  push  to  the  utmost 
— even  to  exaggeration — a  power  existing  in  all  polished  states, 
but  now  mostly  in  this — the  power  of  Fashion  !  This  mysterious 
and  subtle  engine  she  was  eminently  skilled  to  move  according  to 
her  will.  Her  intuitive  penetration  into  character,  her  tact,  and 
her  grace,  were  exactly  the  talents  Fashion  most  demands ;  and 
they  were  at  present  devoted  only  to  that  sphere.  The  rudeness 
that  she  mingled,  at  times,  with  the  bewitching  softness  and  ease 
of  manner  she  could  command  at  others,  increased  the  effect  of 
her  power.  It  is  much  to  intimidate  as  well  as  to  win.  And  her 
rudeness  in  a  very  little  while  grew  popular ;  for  it  was  never 
exercised  but  on  those  whom  the  world  loves  to  see  humbled. 
Modest  merit  in  any  rank  ;  and  even  insolence,  if  accompanied 
with  merit,  were  always  safe  from  her  satire.  It  was  the  hauteur 


100  GODOLPHIN. 

of  foolish  duchesses  or  purse-proud  roturiers  that  she  loved,  and 
scrupled  not,  to  abase. 

And  the  independence  of  her  character  was  mixed  with  extraor- 
dinary sweetness  of  temper.  Constance  could  not  be  in  a  pas- 
sion :  it  was  out  of  her  nature.  If  she  was  stung,  she  could 
utter  a  sarcasm;  but  she  could  not  frown  or  raise  her  voice. 
There  was  that  magic  in  her,  that  she  was  always  feminine.  She 
did  not  stare  young  men  out  of  countenance ;  she  never  addressed 
them  by  their  Christian  names ;  she  never  flirted — never  coquet- 
ted ;  the  bloom  and  flush  of  modesty  was  yet  all  virgin  upon  her 
youth.  She,  the  founder  of  a  new  dynasty,  avoided  what  her 
successors  and  contemporaries  have  deemed  it  necessary  to  incur. 
She  was  the  leader  of  fashion ;  but — it  is  a  miraculous  union — 
she  was  respectable ! 

At  this  period,  some  new  dances  were  brought  into  England. 
These  dances  found  much  favor  in  the  eyes  of  several  great  ladies 
young  enough  to  dance  them.  They  met  at  each  other's  houses 
in  the  morning,  to  practice  the  steps.  Among  these  was  Lady 
Erpingham ;  her  house  became  the  favorite  rendezvous. 

The  young  Marquis  of  Dartington  was  one  of  the  little  knot. 
Celebrated  for  his  great  fortune,  his  personal  beauty,  and  his  gen- 
eral success,  he  resolved  to  fall  in  love  with  Lady  Erpingham. 
He  devoted  himself  exclusively  to  her ;  he  joined  her  in  the 
morning  in  her  rides,  in  the  evening  in  her  gaieties.  He  had 
fallen  in  love  with  her  ?  Yes!  Did  he  love  her?  Not  the  least. 
But  he  was  excessively  idle  !  What  else  could  he  do  ? 

Constance  early  saw  the  attentions  and  designs  of  Lord  Dar- 
tington. There  is  one  difficulty  in  repressing  advances  in  great 
society — one  so  easily  becomes  ridiculous  by  being  a  prude.  But 
Constance  dismissed  Lord  Dartington  with  great  dexterity.  This 
was  the  occasion  : 

One  of  the  apartments  in  Erpingham  House  communicated 
with  a  conservatory.  In  this  conservatory  Constance  was  alone 
one  morning,  when  Lord  Dartington,  who  had  entered  the  house 
with  Lord  Erpingham,  joined  her.  He  was  not  a  man  who  could 
ever  become  sentimental ;  he  was  rather  the  gay  lover — rather  the 
Don  Gaolor  than  the  Amadis  ;  but  he  was  a  little  abashed  before 
Constance.  He  trusted,  however,  to  his  fine  eyes  and  his  good 
complexion,  plucked  up  courage ;  and,  picking  a  flower  from  the 
same  plant  Constance  was  tending,  said  : 

"I  believe  there  is  a  custom  in  some  part  of  the  world  to 
express  love  by  flowers.  May  I,  dear  Lady  Erpingham,  trust  to 
this  flower  to  express  what  I  dare  not  utter?  " 

Constance  did  not  blush,  nor  look  confused,  as  Lord  Darting- 


GODOLPHIN.  10 1 

ton  had  hoped  and  expected.  One  who  had  been  loved  by 
Godolphin  was  not  likely  to  feel  much  agitation  at  the  gallantry 
of  Lord  Dartington;  but  she  looked  gravely  in  his  face,  paused 
a  little  before  she  answered,  and  then  said,  with  a  smile  that 
abashed  the  suitor  more  than  severity  could  possibly  have  done : 

"  My  dear  Lord  Dartington,  do  not  let  us  mistake  each  other. 
I  live  in  the  world  like  other  women,  but  I  am  not  altogether 
like  them.  Not  another  word  of  gallantry  to  me  alone,  as  you 
value  my  friendship.  In  a  crowded  room,  pay  me  as  many  com- 
pliments as  you  like.  It  will  flatter  my  vanity  to  have  you  in  my 
train.  And  now,  just  do  me  the  favor  to  take  these  scissors,  and 
cut  the  dead  leaves  off  that  plant." 

Lord  Dartington,  to  use  a  common  phrase,  ''hummed  and 
hawed."  He  looked,  too,  a  little  angry.  An  artful  and  shrewd 
politician,  it  was  not  Constance's  wish  to  cool  the  devotion, 
though  she  might  the  attachment,  of  a  single  member  of  her  hus- 
band's party.  With  a  kind  look,  but  a  look  so  superior,  so 
queenlike,  so  free  from  the  petty  and  coquettish  condescension  of 
the  sex,  that  the  gay  lord  wondered  from  that  hour  how  he  could 
ever  have  dreamed  of  Constance  as  of  certain  other  ladies,  she 
stretched  her  hand  to  him. 

"  We  are  friends,  Lord  Dartington  ?  And  now  we  know  each 
other,  we  shall  be  so  always." 

Lord  Dartington  bowed  confusedly  over  the  beautiful  hand  he 
touched;  and  Constance,  walking  into  the  drawing-room,  sent 
for  Lord  Erpingham  on  business — Dartington  took  his  leave. 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 

THE    MARRIED     STATE   OF   CONSTANCE. 

CONSTANCE,  Countess  of  Erpingham,  was  young,  rich,  lovely 
as  a  dream,  worshipped  as  a  goddess.  Was  she  happy  ?  And 
was  her  whole  heart  occupied  with  the  trifles  that  surrounded 
her? 

Deep  within  her  memory  was  buried  one  fatal  image,  that  she 
could  not  exorcise.  The  reproaching  and  mournful  countenance 
of  Godolphin  rose  before  her  at  all  times  and  seasons.  The  charm 
of  his  presence  no  other  human  being  could  renew.  His  eloquent 
and  noble  features,  living  and  glorious  with  genius  and  with  pas- 
sion, his  sweet  deep  voice,  his  conversation,  so  rich  with  mind 
and  knowledge,  and  the  subtle  delicacy  with  which  he  applied 
its  graces  to  some  sentiment  dedicated  to  her  (delicious  flattery, 
of  all  flatteries  the  most  attractive  to  a  sensitive  and  intellectual 


102  GODOLPHIN. 

woman  !) — these  occurred  to  her  again  and  again,  and  rendered 
all  she  saw  around  her  flat,  wearisome,  insipid.  Nor  was  this 
deep-seated  and  tender  weakness  the  only  serpent — if  I  may  use 
so  confused  a  metaphor — in  the  roses  of  her  lot. 

And  here  I  invoke  the  reader's  graver  attention.  The  fate  of 
women  in  all  the  more  polished  circles  of  society  is  eminently 
unnatural  and  unhappy.  The  peasant  and  his  dame  are  on  terms 
of  equality — equality  even  of  ambition  :  no  career  is  open  to  one 
and  shut  to  the  other ;  equality  even  of  hardship,  and  hardship  is 
employment ;  no  labor  occupies  the  whole  energies  of  the  man,  but 
leaves  those  of  the  woman  unemployed.  Is  this  the  case  with  the 
wives  in  a  higher  station  ?  the  wives  of  the  lawyer,  the  merchant, 
the  senator,  the  noble  ?  There,  the  men  have  their  occupations ; 
and  the  women  (unless,  like  poor  Fanny,  work-bags  and  parrots 
can  employ  them)  none.  They  are  idle.  They  employ  the 
imagination  and  the  heart.  They  fall  in  love  and  are  wretched  ; 
or  they  remain  virtuous,  and  are  either  wearied  by  an  eternal 
monotony  or  they  fritter  away  intellect,  mind,  character,  in  the 
minutest  frivolities — frivolities  being  their  only  refuge  from  stagna- 
tion. Yes  !  there  is  one  very  curious  curse  for  the  sex  which 
men  don't  consider  !  Once  married,  the  more  aspiring  of  them 
have  no  real  scope  for  ambition  :  the  ambition  gnaws  away  their 
content,  and  never  finds  elsewhere  wherewithal  to  feed  on. 

This  was  Constance's  especial  misfortune.  Her  lofty,  and 
restless,  and  soaring  spirit  pined  for  a  sphere  of  action,  and  ball- 
rooms and  boudoirs  met  it  on  every  side.  One  hope  she  did  in- 
deed cherish ;  that  hope  was  the  source  of  her  intriguings  and 
schemes,  of  her  care  for  seeming  trifles,  the  waste  of  her  energies 
on  seeming  frivolities.  This  hope,  this  object,  was  to  diminish, 
to  crush,  not  only  the  party  which  had  forsaken  her  father,  but 
the  power  of  that  order  to  which  she  belonged  herself;  which 
she  had  entered  only  to  humble.  But  this  hope  was  a  distant  and 
chill  vision.  She  was  too  rational  to  anticipate  an  early  and  ef- 
fectual change  in  our  social  state,  and  too  rich  in  the  treasures  of 
mind  to  be  the  creature  of  one  idea.  Satiety — the  common 
curse  of  the  great — crept  over  her  day  by  day.  The  powers 
within  her  lay  stagnant ;  the  keen  intellect  rusted  in  its  sheath. 

"  How  is  it,"  said  she  to  the  beautiful  Countess  of ,  "  that 

you  seem  always  so  gay  and  so  animated ;  that  with  all  your  viva- 
city and  tenderness,  you  are  never  at  a  loss  for  occupation?  You 
never  seem  weary — ennuye.  Why  is  this  ? 

-'  I  will  tell  you,"  said  the  pretty  Countess,  archly  ;  "  I  change 
my  lovers  every  month."  Constance  blushed,  and  asked  no 
more. 


GODOLPHIN.  lOJ 

Many  women  in  her  state,  influenced  by  contagious  example, 
wearied  by  a  life  in  which  the  heart  had  no  share  ;  without  child- 
ren ;  without  a  guide ;  assailed  and  wooed  on  all  sides,  in  all 
shapes, — many  women  might  have  ventured,  if  not  into  love,  at 
least  into  coquetry.  But  Constance  remained  as  bright  and  cold 
as  ever — "  the  unsunned  snow  !  "  It  might  be,  indeed,  that  the 
memory  of  Godolphin  preserved  her  safe  from  all  lesser  dangers. 
The  asbestos  once  conquered  by  fire  can  never  be  consumed  by 
it ;  but  there  was  also  another  cause  in  Constance's  very  nature 
— it  was  pride  ! 

Oh !  if  men  could  but  dream  of  what  a  proud  woman  endures 
in  those  caresses  which  humble  her,  they  would  not  wonder  why 
proud  women  are  so  difficult  to  subdue.  This  is  a  matter  on 
which  we  all  ponder  much,  but  we  dare  not  write  honestly  upon 
it.  But  imagine  a  young,  haughty,  guileless  beauty,  married  to  a 
man  whom  she  neither  loves  nor  honors ;  and  so  far  from  that 
want  of  love  rendering  her  likely  to  fall  hereafter,  it  is  more 
probable  that  it  will  make  her  recoil  from  the  very  name  of  love. 

About  this  time  the  Dowager  Lady  Erpingham  died ;  an  event 
sincerely  mourned  by  Constance,  and  which  broke  the  strongest 
tie  that  united  the  young  Countess  to  her  lord.  Lord  Erpingham 
and  Constance,  indeed,  now  saw  but  little  of  each  other.  Like 
most  men  six  feet  high,  with  large  black  whiskers,  the  Earl  was 
vain  of  his  person  ;  and,  like  most  rich  noblemen,  he  found 
plenty  of  ladies  who  assured  him  he  was  irresistible.  He  had 
soon  grown  angry  at  the  unadmiring  and  calm  urbanity  of  Con- 
stance; and,  living  agreat  deal  with  single  men,  he  formed  liaisons 
of  the  same  order  they  do.  He  was,  however,  sensible  that  he 
had  been  fortunate  in  the  choice  of  a  wife.  His  political  import- 
ance the  wisdom  of  Constance  had  quadrupled,  at  the  least ;  his 
house  she  had  rendered  the  most  brilliant  in  London,  and  his 
name  the  most  courted  in  the  lists  of  the  peerage.  Though 
munificent,  she  was  not  extravagant ;  though  a  beauty,  she  did  not 
intrigue ;  neither,  though  his  inconstancy  was  open,  did  she  ap- 
pear jealous;  nor,  whatever  the  errors  of  his  conduct,  did  she 
ever  disregard  his  interest,  disobey  his  wishes,  or  waver  from  the 
smooth  and  continuous  sweetness  of  her  temper.  Of  such  a  wife, 
Lord  Erpingham  could  not  complain :  he  esteemed  her,  praised 
her,  asked  her  advice,  and  stood  a  little  in  awe  of  her. 

Ah,  Constance !  had  you  been  the  daughter  of  a  noble  or  a 
peasant,  had  you  been  the  daughter  of  any  man  but  John  Vernon 
— what  a  treasure  beyond  price,  without  parallel,  would  that  heart, 
that  beauty,  that  genius  have  been  ! 


104  GODOLPHIN. 

CHAPTER  XXV. 

THE   PLEASURE   OF   RETALIATING   HUMILIATION CONSTANCE'S  DE- 
FENCE     OF     FASHION REMARKS     ON      FASHION GODOLPHIN'S 

WHEREABOUT FANNY    MILLINGER'S   CHARACTER    OF  HERSELF 

WANT  OF  COURAGE  IN  MORALISTS. 

IT  was  a  proud  moment  for  Constance  when  the  Duchess  of 
Winstoun  and  Lady  Margaret  Midgecomb  wrote  to  her,  worried 
her,  beset  her,  for  a  smile,  a  courtesy,  an  invitation,  or  a  ticket 
to  Almack's. 

They  had  at  first  thought  to  cry  her  down ;  to  declare  that  she 
was  plebeian,  mad,  bizarre,  and  a  blue.  It  was  all  in  vain.  Con- 
stance rose  every  hour.  They  struggled  against  the  conviction, 
but  it  would  not  do.  The  first  person  who  confounded  them 
with  a  sense  of  their  error  was  the  late  King,  then  Regent ;  he 
devoted  himself  to  Lady  Erpingham  for  a  whole  evening,  at  a 
ball  given  by  himself.  From  that  hour  they  were  assured  they 
had  been  wrong :  they  accordingly  called  on  her  the  next  day. 
Constance  received  them  with  the  same  coldness  she  had  always 
evinced ;  but  they  went  away  declaring  they  never  saw  any  one 
whose  manners  were  so  improved.  They  then  sent  her  an  invita- 
tion !  She  refused  it ;  A  second  !  She  refused.  A  third,  begging 
her  to  fix  the  day  !  !  !  She  fixed  the  day,  and  disappointed  them. 
Lord  bless  us  !  How  sorry  they  were,  how  alarmed,  how  terri- 
fied !  Their  dear  Lady  Erpingham  must  be  ill !  They  sent  every 
day  for  the  next  week  to  know  how  she  was  ! 

"Why,"  said  Mrs.  Trevor  to  Lady  Erpingham ;  "Why  do 
you  continue  so  cruel  to  these  poor  people?  I  know  they  were 
very  impertinent,  and  so  forth,  once ;  but  it  is  surely  wiser  and 
more  dignified  now  to  forgive  ;  to  appear  unconscious  of  the 
past:  people  of  the  world  ought  not  to  quarrel  with  each  other." 

"  You  are  right,  and  yet  you  are  mistaken,"  said  Constance  : 
"  I  do  forgive,  and  I  don't  quarrel;  but  my  opinion,  my  con- 
tempt, remain  the  same,  or  are  rather  more  disdainful  than  ever. 
These  people  are  not  worth  losing  the  luxury  we  all  experience  in 
expressing  contempt.  I  continue,  therefore,  but  quietly  and 
without  affectation,  to  indulge  that  luxury.  Besides,  I  own 
to  you,  my  dear  Mrs.  Trevor,  I  do  think  that  the  mere  insolence 
of  titles  must  fairly  and  thoroughly  be  put  down,  if  we  sincerely 
wish  to  render  society  agreeable ;  and  where  can  we  find  a  better 
example  for  punishment  than  the  Duchess  of  Winstoun  ?  " 

"  But,   my  dear  Lady  Erpingham,  you  are  thought  insolent : 


GODOLPHIN.  105 

your  friend,  Lady ,  is  called  insolent,  too  :  are  you  sure  the 

charge  is  not  merited  ?  ' ' 

"I  allow  the  justice  of  the  charge ;  but  you  will  observe,  ours 
is  not  the  insolence  of  rank :  we  have  made  it  a  point  to  protect, 
to  the  utmost,  the  poor  and  unfriended  of  all  circles.  Are  we 
ever  rude  to  governesses  or  companions,  or  poor  writers  or  musi- 
cians ?  When  a  man  marries  below  him,  do  we  turn  our  backs  on 
the  poor  wife  ?  Do  we  not,  on  the  contrary,  lavish  our  attention 
on  her,  and  throw  round  her  equivocal  and  joyless  state  the  pro- 
tection of  Fashion  ?  No,  no  !  our  insolence  is  JUSTICE  !  it  is  the 
chalice  returned  to  the  lips  which  prepared  it ;  it  is  insolence  to 
the  insolent:  reflect,  and  you  will  allow  it." 

The  fashion  that  Constance  set  and  fostered  was  of  a  generous 
order ;  but  it  was  not  suited  to  the  majority ;  it  was  corrupted  by 
her  followers  into  a  thousand  basenesses.  In  vain  do  we  make  a 
law,  if  the  general  spirit  is  averse  to  the  law.  Constance  could 
humble  the  great ;  could  loosen  the  links  of  extrinsic  rank ; 
could  undermine  the  power  of  titles ;  but  that  was  all !  She 
could  abase  the  proud,  but  not  elevate  the  general  tone :  for  one 
slavery  she  only  substituted  another, — people  hugged  the  chains 
of  Fashion,  as  before  they  hugged  those  of  Titular  Arrogance. 

Amidst  the  gossip  of  the  day,  Constance  heard  much  of  Godol- 
phin.  and  all  spoke  of  him  with  interest — even  those  who  could 
not  comprehend  his  very  intricate  and  peculiar  character.  Sepa- 
rated from  her  by  lands  and  seas,  there  seemed  no  danger  in  allow- 
ing herself  the  sweet  pleasure  of  hearing  his  actions  and  his  mind 
discussed.  She  fancied  she  did  not  permit  herself  to  love  him ; 
she  was  too  pure  not  to  start  at  such  an  idea ;  but  her  mind  was 
not  so  regulated,  so  trained  and  educated  in  sacred  principle, 
that  she  forbade  herself  the  luxury  to  remember.  Of  his  present 
mode  of  life  she  heard  little.  He  was  traced  from  city  to  city  ; 
from  shore  to  shore ;  from  the  haughty  noblesse  of  Vienna  to  the 
gloomy  shrines  of  Memphis,  by  occasional  report,  and  seemed  to 
tarry  long  in  no  place.  This  roving  and  unsettled  life,  which 
secretly  assured  her  of  her  power,  suffused  his  image  in  all  tender 
and  remorseful  dyes.  Ah  !  where  is  that  one  person  to  be  envied, 
could  we  read  the  heart? 

The  actress  had  heard  incidentally  from  Saville  of  Gcdolphin's 
attachment  to  the  beautiful  Countess.  She  longed  to  see  her ; 
and  when,  one  night  at  the  theatre,  she  was  informed  that  Lady 
Erpingham  was  in  the  Lord  Chamberlain's  box  close  before  her,  she 
could  scarcely  command  her  self-possession  sufficiently  to  perform 
with  her  wonted  brilliancy  of  effect. 

She  was  greatly  struck  by  the  singular  nobleness  of  Lady  Erping- 


Io6  GODOLPHIN. 

ham's  face  and  person ;  and  Godolphin  rose  in  her  estimation, 
from  the  justice  of  the  homage  he  had  rendered  to  so  fair  a 
shrine.  What  a  curious  trait,  by  the  by,  that  is  in  women — their 
exaggerated  anxiety  to  see  one  who  has  been  loved  by  the  man  in 
whom  they  themselves  take  interest ;  and  the  manner  in  which 
the  said  man  rises  or  falls  in  their  estimation,  according  as  they 
admire,  or  are  disappointed  in,  the  object  of  his  love. 

"  And  so,"  said  Saville,  supping  one  night  with  the  actress, 
"  you  think  the  world  does  not  overlaud  Lady  Erpingham  ?  " 

"No:  she  is  what  Medea  would  have  been,  if  innocent — full 
of  majesty,  and  yet  of  sweetness.  It  is  the  face  of  a  queen  of 
some  three  thousand  years  back.  I  could  have  worshipped  her. ' ' 

"  My  little  Fanny,  you  are  a  strange  creature.  Methinks,  you 
have  a  dash  of  poetry  in  you." 

"  Nobody  who  has  not  written  poetry  could  ever  read  my 
character,"  answered  Fanny  with  narvete,  yet  with  truth. 

"Yet  you  have  not  much  of  the  ideal  about  you,  pretty  one." 

"No;  because  I  was  so  early  thrown  on  myself,  that  I  was 
forced  to  make  independence  my  chief  good.  I  soon  saw  that  if 
I  followed  my  heart  to  and  fro,  wherever  it  led  me,  I  should  be 
the  creature  of  every  breath,  the  victim  of  every  accident :  I 
should  have  been  the  very  fool  of  romance;  lived  on  a  smile; 
and  died,  perhaps,  in  a  ditch  at  last.  Accordingly,  I  set  to  work 
with  my  feelings,  and  pared  and  cut  them  down  to  a  convenient 
compass.  Happy  for  me  that  I  did  so  !  What  would  have  become 
of  me  if,  years  ago,  when  I  loved  Godolphin,  I  had  thrown  the 
whole  world  of  my  heart  upon  him?  " 

"  Why,  he  has  generosity ;  he  would  not  have  deserted  you." 

"But  I  should  have  wearied  him,"  answered  Fanny;  "and 
that  would  have  been  quite  enough  for  me.  But  I  did  love  him 
well,  and  purely  (ah  !  you  may  smile  !)  and  disinterestedly.  I 
was  only  fortified  in  my  resolution  not  to  love  any  one  too  much, 
by  perceiving  that  he  had  affection,  but  no  sympathy,  for  me. 
His  nature  was  different  from  mine.  I  am  woman  in  everything  ; 
and  Godolphin  is  always  sighing  for  a  goddess  !  " 

"  I  should  like  to  sketch  your  character,  Fanny.  It  is  original, 
though  not  strongly  marked.  I  never  met  with  it  in  any  book ; 
yet  it  is  true  to  your  sex,  and  to  the  world." 

"  Few  people  could  paint  me  exactly,"  answered  Fanny. 
"  The  danger  is,  that  they  would  make  too  much  or  too  little  of 
me.  But  such  as  I  am,  the  world  ought  to  know  what  is  so  com- 
mon, and,  as  you  think,  so  undescribed." 

And    now,  beautiful  Constance,  farewell  for  the  present!     \ 


GODOLPHIN.  107 

leave  you  surrounded  by  power,  and  pomp,  and  adulation.  Enjoy 
as  you  may  that  for  which  you  sacrificed  affection! 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

THE  VISIONARY   AND   HIS   DAUGHTER. — AN    ENGLISHMAN,    SUCH   AS 
FOREIGNERS   IMAGINE  THE   ENGLISH. 

WE  must  now  present  the  reader  to  characters  very  different 
from  those  which  have  hitherto  passed  before  his  eye. 

Without  the  immortal  city,  along  the  Appia  Via,  there  dwelt  a 
singular  and  romantic  visionary,  of  the  name  of  Volktman.  He 
was,  by  birth,  a  Dane ;  and  nature  had  bestowed  on  him  that 
frame  of  mind  which  might  have  won  him  a  distinguished  career, 
had  she  placed  the  period  of  his  birth  in  the  eleventh  century. 
Volktman  was  essentially  a  man  belonging  to  the  past  time  :  the 
character  of  his  enthusiasm  was  weird  and  Gothic ;  with  beings 
of  the  present  day  he  had  no  sympathy ;  their  loves,  their 
hatreds,  their  politics,  their  literature,  awoke  no  echo  in  his 
breast.  He  did  not  affect  to  herd  with  them  ;  his  life  was  soli- 
tude, and  its  occupation  study — and  study  of  that  nature  which 
every  day  unfitted  him  more  and  more  for  the  purposes  of  exis- 
tence. In  a  word,  he  was  a  reader  of  the  stars  ;  a  believer  in  the 
occult  and  dreamy  science  of  astrology.  Bred  up  to  the  art  of 
sculpture,  he  had  early  in  life  sought  Rome,  as  the  nurse  of 
inspiration  ;  but  even  then  he  had  brought  with  him  the  dark  and 
brooding  temper  of  his  northern  tribe.  The  images  of  the  classic 
world ;  the  bright,  and  cold,  and  beautiful  divinities,  whose 
natures  as  well  as  shapes  the  marble  simulation  of  life  is  so  espe- 
cially adapted  to  represent ;  spoke  but  little  to  Volktman's  pre- 
occupied and  gloomy  imagination.  Faithful  to  the  superstitions 
and  the  warriors  of  the  North,  the  loveliness  and  majesty  of  the 
southern  creations  but  called  forth  in  him  the  desire  to  apply  the 
principles  by  which  they  were  formed  to  the  embodying  those 
stern  visions  which  his  haggard  and  dim  fancies  only  could 
invoke.  This  train  of  inspiration  preserved  him,  at  least,  from 
the  deadliest  vice  in  a  worshipper  of  the  arts — commonplace.  He 
was  no  servile  and  trite  imitator  ;  his  very  faults  were  solemn  and 
commanding.  But  before  he  had  gained  that  long  experience 
which  can  alone  perfect  genius,  his  natural  energies  were  directed 
to  new  channels.  In  an  illness  which  prevented  his  applying  to 
his  art,  he  had  accidentally  sought  entertainment  in  a  certain 
work  upon  astrology.  The  wild  and  imposing  theories  of  the 
— if  science  it  may  be  called — especially  charmed  and. 


I08  GODOLPHIN. 

invited  him.  The  clear  bright  nights  of  his  fatherland  were 
brought  back  to  his  remembrance ;  he  recalled  the  mystic  and 
unanalyzed  impressions  with  which  he  had  gazed  upon  the  lights 
of  heaven ;  and  he  imagined  that  the  very  vagueness  of  his  feel- 
ings was  a  proof  of  the  certainty  of  the  science. 

The  sons  of  the  North  are  preeminently  liable  to  be  affected  by 
that  romance  of  emotion  which  the  hushed  and  starry  aspect  of 
night  is  calculated  to  excite.  The  long-unbroken,  luxurious 
silence  that,  in  their  frozen  climate,  reigns  from  the  going  down 
of  the  sun  to  its  rise  ;  the  wandering  and  sudden  meteors  that  dis- 
port, as  with  an  impish  life,  along  the  noiseless  and  solemn 
heaven ;  the  peculiar  radiance  of  the  stars  ;  and  even  the  sterile 
and  severe  features  of  the  earth,  which  those  stars  light  up  with 
their  chill  and  ghostly  serenity,  serve  to  deepen  the  effect  of  the 
wizard  tales  which  are  instilled  into  the  ear  of  childhood,  and  to 
connect  the  less  known  and  more  visionary  impulses  of  life  with 
the  influences,  or  at  least  with  the  associations,  of  Night  and 
Heaven. 

To  Volktman,  more  alive  than  even  his  countrymen  are  wont 
to  be  to  superstitious  impressions,  the  science  on  which  he  had 
chanced  came  with  an  all-absorbing  interest  and  fascination.  He 
surrendered  himself  wholly  to  his  new  pursuit.  By  degrees  the 
block  and  the  chisel  were  neglected,  and,  though  he  still  worked 
from  time  to  time,  he  ceased  to  consider  the  sculptor's  art  as  the  vo- 
cation of  his  life  and  the  end  of  his  ambition.  Fortunately,  though 
not  rich,  Volktman  was  not  without  the  means  of  existence,  nor 
even  without  the  decent  and  proper  comforts  :  so  that  he  was  en- 
abled, as  few  men  are,  to  indulge  his  ardor  for  unprofitable  specu- 
lations, albeit  to  the  exclusion  of  lucrative  pursuits.  It  may  be 
noted  that  when  a  man  is  addicted  to  an  occupation  that  with- 
draws him  from  the  world,  any  great  affliction  tends  to  confirm, 
without  hope  of  cure,  his  inclination  to  solitude.  The  world, 
distasteful,  in  that  it  gave  no  pleasure,  becomes  irremediably 
hateful  when  it  is  coupled  with  the  remembrance  of  pain.  Volkt- 
man had  married  an  Italian,  a  woman  who  loved  him  entirely, 
and  whom  he  loved  with  that  strong  though  uncaressing  affection 
common  to  men  of  his  peculiar  temper.  Of  the  gay  and  social 
habits  and  constitution  of  her  country,  the  Italian  was  not  dis- 
posed to  suffer  the  astrologer  to  dwell  only  among  the  stars.  She 
sought,  playfully  and  kindly,  to  attract  him  towards  human 
society;  and  Volktman  could  not  always  resist — as  what  man 
earth-born  can  do  ? — the  influence  of  the  fair  presider  over  his 
house  and  hearth.  It  happened  that  on  one  day  in  which  she  pecu- 
liarly wished  his  attendance  at  some  one  of  those  parties  in  which 


GODOLPHIN.  ICQ 

Englishmen  think  the  notion  of  festivity  strange — for  it  includes 
conversation — Volktman  had  foretold  the  menace  of  some  great 
misfortune.  Uncertain,  from  the  character  of  the  prediction, 
whether  to  wish  his  wife  to  remain  at  home  or  to  go  abroad,  he 
yielded  to  her  wish,  and  accompanied  her  to  her  friend's  house. 
A  young  Englishman  lately  arrived  at  Rome,  and  already  cele- 
brated in  the  circles  of  that  city  for  his  eccentricity  of  life  and 
his  passion  for  beauty,  was  of  the  party.  He  appeared  struck 
with  the  sculptor's  wife ;  and  in  his  attentions,  Volktman,  for  the 
first  and  last  time,  experienced  the  pangs  of  jealousy  :  he  hurried 
his  wife  away. 

On  their  return  home,  whether  or  not  a  jewel  worn  by  the 
Signora  had  attracted  the  cupidity  of  some  of  the  lawless 
race  who  live  through  gaining,  and  profiting  by,  such  informa- 
tion, they  were  attacked  by  two  robbers  in  the  obscure  and  ill- 
lighted  suburb.  Though  Volktman  offered  no  resistance,  the  man- 
ner of  their  assailants  was  rude  and  violent.  The  Signora  was 
fearfully  alarmed  ;  her  shrieks  brought  a  stranger  to  their  assis- 
tance ;  it  was  the  English  youth  who  had  so  alarmed  the  jealousy 
of  Volktman.  Accustomed  to  danger  in  his  profession  of  a  gal- 
lant, the  Englishman  seldom,  in  those  foreign  lands,  went  from 
home  at  night  without  the  protection  of  pistols.  At  the  sight  of 
fire-arms  the  ruffians  felt  their  courage  evaporate ;  they  fled  from 
their  prey ;  and  the  Englishman  assisted  Volktman  in  conveying 
the  Italian  to  her  home.  But  the  terror  of  the  encounter  operated 
fatally  on  a  delicate  frame ;  and  within  three  weeks  from  that 
night  Volktman  was  a  widower. 

His  marriage  had  been  blessed  with  but  one  daughter,  who  at 
the  time  of  this  catastrophe  was  about  eight  years  of  age.  His 
love  for  his  child  in  some  measure  reconciled  Volktman  to  life ; 
and  as  the  shock  of  the  event  subsided,  he  returned,  with  a  per- 
tinacity which  was  now  subjected  to  no  interruption,  to  his 
beloved  occupations  and  mysterious  researches.  One  visitor  alone 
found  it  possible  to  win  frequent  ingress  to  his  seclusion ;  it  was 
the  young  Englishman.  A  sentiment  of  remorse  at  the  jealous 
feelings  he  had  experienced,  and  for  which  his  wife,  though  an 
Italian,  had  never  given  him  even  the  shadow  of  a  cause,  had 
softened — into  a  feeling  rendered  kind  by  the  associations  of  the 
deceased,  and  a  vague  desire  to  atone  to  her  for  an  unacknowl- 
edged error — the  dislike  he  had  at  first  conceived  against  the 
young  man.  This  was  rapidly  confirmed  by  the  gentle  and  win- 
ning manners  of  the  stranger,  by  his  attentions  to  the  deceased, 
to  whom  he  had  sent  an  English  physician  of  great  skill,  and,  as 


110  6ODOLPHIN. 

their  acquaintance  expanded,  by  the  animated  interest  which  he 
testified  in  the  darling  theories  of  the  astrologer. 

It  happened  also  that  Volktman's  mother  had  been  the  daughter 
of  Scotch  parents.  She  had  taught  him  the  English  tongue ;  and 
it  was  the  only  language,  save  his  own,  which  he  spoke  as  a 
native.  This  circumstance  tended  greatly  to  facilitate  his  inter- 
course with  the  .traveller  ;  and  he  found  in  the  society  of  a  man 
ardent,  sensitive,  melancholy,  and  addicted  to  all  abstract  con- 
templation, a  pleasure  which,  among  the  keen,  but  uncultivated 
intellects  of  Italy,  he  had  never  enjoyed. 

Frequently,  then,  came  the  young  Englishman  to  the  lone  house 
on  the  Appia  Via ;  and  the  mysterious  and  unearthly  conversation 
of  the  starry  visionary  afforded  to  him,  who  had  early  learned  to 
scrutinize  the  varieties  of  his  kind,  a  strange  delight,  heightened 
by  the  contrast  it  presented  to  the  worldly  natures  with  which  he 
usually  associated,  and  the  commonplace  occupations  of  a  life  in 
pursuit  of  pleasure. 

And  there  was  one  who,  child  as  she  was,  watched  the  coming 
of  that  young  and  beautiful  stranger  with  emotion  beyond  her 
years.  Brought  up  alone ;  mixing,  since  her  mother's  death,  with 
no  companions  of  her  age ;  catching  dim  and  solemn  glimpses  of 
her  father's  wild  but  lofty  speculations ;  his  books,  filled  with 
strange  characters  and  imposing  "  words  of  mighty  sound,"  open 
forever  to  her  young  and  curious  gaze  ;  it  can  scarce  be  matter  of 
wonder  that  something  strange  and  unworldly  mingled  with  the 
elements  of  character  which  Lucilla  Volktman  early  developed — 
a  character  that  was  nature  itself,  yet  of  a  nature  erratic  and 
bizarre.  Her  impulses  she  obeyed  spontaneously,  but  none  fath- 
omed their  origin.  She  was  not  of  a  quiet  and  meek  order  of 
mind ;  but  passionate,  changeful,  and  restless.  She  would  laugh 
and  weep  without  apparent  cause ;  the  color  on  her  cheek  never 
seemed  for  two  minutes  the  same;  and  the  most  fitful  changes  of 
an  April  heaven  were  immutability  itself  compared  with  the  play 
and  lustre  of  expression  that  undulated  in  her  features,  and  her 
wild,  deep,  eloquent  eyes. 

Her  person  resembled  her  mind  ;  it  was  beautiful ;  but  the 
beauty  struck  you  less  than  the  singularity  of  its  character.  Her 
eyes  were  of  a  darkness  that  at  night  seemed  black  ;  but  her  hair 
was  of  the  brightest  and  purest  auburn ;  her  complexion,  some- 
times pale,  sometimes  radiant  even  to  the  flush  of  a  fever,  was 
delicate  and  clear ;  her  teeth  and  mouth  were  lovely  beyond  all 
words  ;  her  hands  and  feet  were  small  to  a  fault ;  and  as  she  grew 
up  (for  we  have  forestalled  her  age  in  this  description)  her  shape, 
though  wanting  in  height,  was  in  such  harmony  and  proportion, 


GODOLPHIN.  1 1  \ 

<hat  the  mind  of  the  sculptor  would  sometimes  escape  from  the 
absorption  of  the  astrologer,  and  Volktman  would  gaze  upon  her 
with  the  same  admiration  that  he  would  have  bestowed,  in  spite 
of  the  subject,  on  the  goddess-forms  of  Phidias  or  Canova.  But 
then,  this  beauty  was  accompanied  with  such  endless  variety  of 
gesture,  often  so  wild,  though  always  necessarily  graceful,  that 
the  eye  ached  for  that  repose  requisite  for  prolonged  admiration. 

When  she  was  spoken  to,  she  did  not  often  answer  to  the  pur- 
pose, but  rather  appeared  to  reply  as  to  some  interrogatory  of  her 
own ;  in  the  midst  of  one  occupation,  she  would  start  up  to 
another ;  leave  that,  in  turn,  undone,  and  sit  down  in  a  silence 
lasting  for  hours.  Her  voice,  in  singing,  was  exquisitely  melo- 
dious ;  she  had,  too,  an  intuitive  talent  for  painting;  and  she  read 
all  the  books  that  came  in  her  way  with  an  avidity  that  bespoke 
at  once  the  restlessness  and  the  genius  of  her  mind. 

This  description  of  Lucilla,  must,  I  need  scarcely  repeat,  be 
considered  as  applicable  to  her  at  some  years  distant  from  the 
time  in  which  the  young  Englishman  first  attracted  her  childish 
but  ardent  imagination.  To  her,  that  face,  with  its  regular  and 
harmonious  features,  its  golden  hair,  and  soft,  shy,  melancholy 
aspect,  seemed  as  belonging  to  a  higher  and  brighter  order  of 
beings  than  those  who,  with  exaggerated  lineaments  and  swarthy 
hues,  surrounded  and  displeased  her.  She  took  a  strange  and 
thrilling  pleasure  in  creeping  to  his  side,  and  looking  up,  when 
unobserved,  at  the  countenance  which,  in  his  absence,  she  loved 
to  imitate  with  her  pencil  by  day,  and  to  recall  in  her  dreams  at 
night.  But  she  seldom  spoke  to  him,  and  she  shrank,  covered 
with  painful  blushes,  from  his  arms,  whenever  he  attempted  to 
bestow  on  her  those  caresses  which  children  are  wont  to  claim  as 
an  attention.  Once,  however,  she  summoned  courage  to  ask  him 
to  teach  her  English,  and  he  complied.  She  learned  that  lan- 
guage with  surprising  facility ;  and  as  Volktman  loved  its  sound 
she  grew  familiar  with  its  difficulties,  by  always  addressing  her 
father  in  a  tongue  which  became  inexpressibly  dear  to  her.  And 
the  young  stranger  delighted  to  hear  that  soft  and  melodious 
voice,  with  its  trembling,  Italian  accent,  make  music  from  the 
nervous  and  masculine  language  of  his  native  land.  Scarce 
accountably  to  himself,  a  certain  tender  and  peculiar  interest  in 
the  fortunes  of  this  singular  and  bewitching  child  grew  up  within 
him — peculiar  and  not  easily  accounted  for,  in  that  it  was  not 
wholly  the  interest  we  feel  in  an  engaging  child,  and  yet  was  of 
no  more  interested  nor  sinister  order.  Were  there  truth  in  the 
science  of  the  stars,  I  should  say  that  they  had  told  him  her  fate 
was  to  have  affinity  with  his ;  and  with  that  persuasion,  something 


112  GODOLPHIN. 

mysterious,  and  more  than  ordinarily  tender,  entered  into  the 
affection  he  felt  for  the  daughter  of  his  friend. 

The  Englishman  was  himself  of  a  romantic  character.  He  had 
been  self-taught ;  and  his  studies,  irregular  though  often  deep, 
had  given  directions  to  his  intellect  frequently  enthusiastic  and 
unsound.  His  imagination  preponderated  over  his  judgment ; 
and  any  pursuit  that  attracted  his  imagination  won  his  entire 
devotion,  until  his  natural  sagacity  proved  it  deceitful.  If  at 
times,  living  as  he  did  in  that  daily  world  which  so  sharpens  our 
common-sense,  he  smiled  at  the  persevering  fervor  of  the  astrolo- 
ger, he  more  often  shared  it ;  and  he  became  his  pupil  in  "  the 
poetry  of  heaven,"  with  a  secret  but  deep  belief  in  the  mysteries 
cultivated  by  his  master.  Carrying  the  delusion  to  its  height,  I  fear 
that  the  enthusiasts  entered  upon  ground  still  more  shadowy  and 
benighted ;  the  old  secrets  of  the  alchymist,  and,  perhaps,  even 
of  those  arcana  yet  more  gloomy  and  less  rational,  were  subjected 
to  their  serious  contemplation  ;  and  night  after  night,  they  deliv- 
ered themselves  wholly  up  to  that  fearful  and  charmed  fascination 
which  the  desire  and  effort  to  overleap  our  mortal  boundaries  pro- 
duce even  in  the  hardest  and  best  regulated  minds.  .  The  train  of 
thought  so  long  nursed  by  the  abstruse  and  solitary  Dane,  was, 
perhaps,  a  better  apology  for  the  weakness  of  credulity,  than  the 
youth  and  wandering  fancy  of  the  Englishman.  But  the  scene 
around — not  alluring  to  the  one — fed  to  overflowing  the  romantic 
aspirations  of  the  other. 

On  his  way  home,  as  the  stars  (which  night  had  been  spent  in 
reading)  began  to  wink  and  fade,  the  Englishman  crossed  the 
haunted  Almo,  renowned  of  yore  for  its  healing  virtues,  and  in 
whose  stream  the  far-famed  simulacrum  (the  image  of  Cybele), 
which  fell  from  Heaven,  was  wont  to  be  laved  with  every  coming 
spring ;  and  around  his  steps,  till  he  gained  his  home,  were  the 
relics  and  monuments  of  that  superstition  which  sheds  so  much 
beauty  over  all  that,  in  harsh  reasoning,  it  may  be  said  to  degrade  ; 
so  that  his  mind,  always  peculiarly  alive  to  external  impressions, 
was  girt,  as  it  were,  with  an  atmosphere  favorable  both  to  the 
lofty  speculation  and  the  graceful  credulities  of  romance. 

The  Englishman  remained  at  Rome,  with  slight  intervals  of 
absence,  for  nearly  three  years.  On  the  night  before  the  day  in 
which  he  received  intelligence  of  an  event  that  recalled  him  to 
his  native  country,  he  repaired  at  an  hour  accidentally  later  than 
usual  to  the  astrologer's  abode. 


GOBOLPHIN.  113 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

A  CONVERSATION    LITTLE   APPERTAINING   TO  THE  NINETEENTH  CEN- 
TURY.— RESEARCHES   INTO    HUMAN    FATE. THE    PREDICTION. 

ON  entering  the  apartment,  he  found  Lucilla  seated  on  a  low 
stool  beside  the  astrologer.  She  looked  up  when  she  heard  his 
footstep ;  but  her  countenance  seemed  so  dejected,  that  he  turned 
involuntarily  to  that  of  Volktman  for  explanation.  Volktman 
met  his  gaze  with  a  steadfast  and  mournful  aspect. 

"What  has  happened  ?"  asked  the  Englishman;  "  you  seem 
sad ;  you  do  not  greet  me  as  usual." 

"  I  have  been  with  the  stars,"  replied  the  visionary. 

"They  seem  but  poor  company,"  rejoined  the  Englishman; 
"  and  do  not  appear  to  have  much  heightened  your  spirits." 

"Jest  not,  my  friend,"  said  Volktman ;  "it  was  for  the  loss  of 
thee  that  I  looked  sorrowful.  I  perceive  that  thou  wilt  take  a 
journey  soon,  and  that  it  will  be  of  no  pleasant  nature." 

"Indeed!"  answered  the  Englishman,  smilingly.  "I  ask 
leave  to  question  the  fact :  you  know  better  than  any  man,  how 
often,  through  an  error  in  our  calculations,  through  haste,  even 
through  an  over-attention,  astrological  predictions  are  exposed  to 
falsification ;  and  at  present  I  foresee  so  little  chance  of  my  quit- 
ting Rome,  that  I  prefer  the  earthly  probabilities  to  the  celestial." 

"  My  schemes  are  just,  and  the  Heavens  wrote  their  decrees  in 
their  clearest  language,"  answered  the  astrologer.  "  Thou  art 
on  the  eve  of  quitting  Rome." 

"  On  what  occasion  ?  " 

The  astrologer  hesitated  ;  the  young  visitor  pressed  the  ques- 
tion. 

"  The  lord  of  the  fourth  house,"  said  Volktman,  reluctantly, 
' '  is  located  in  the  eleventh  house.  Thou  knowest  to  whom  the 
position  portends  disaster." 

"  My  father  !  "  said  the  Englishman  anxiously,  turning  pale; 
"  I  think  that  position  would  relate  to  him." 

"  It  doth,"  said  the  astrologer,  slowly. 

' '  Impossible  !  I  heard  from  him  to-day ;  he  is  well — let  me 
see  the  figures." 

The  young  man  looked  over  the  mystic  hieroglyphics  of  the 
art,  inscribed  on  a  paper  that  was  placed  before  the  visionary, 
with  deep  and  scrutinizing  attention.  Without  bewildering  the 
reader  with  those  words  and  figures  of  weird  sound  and  import 
which  perplex  the  uninitiated,  and  entangle  the  disciple  of  astrol- 
ogy, I  shall  merely  observe  that  there  was  one  point  in  which  the 


114  GODOLPHIN. 

judgment  appeared  to  admit  doubt  as  to  the  signification.  The 
Englishman  insisted  on  the  doubt ;  and  a  very  learned  and  edify- 
ing debate  was  carried  on  between  pupil  and  master,  in  the  heat 
of  which  all  recollection  of  the  point  in  dispute  (as  is  usual  in  such 
cases  )  evaporated. 

"  I  know  not  how  it  is,"  said  the  Englishman, "  that  I  should  give 
any  credence  to  a  faith  which  (craving  your  forgiveness)  most  men 
out  of  Bedlam  concur,  at  this  day,  in  condemning  as  wholly  idle 
and  absurd.  For  it  may  be  presumed,  that  men  only  incline  to 
some  unpopular  theory  in  proportion  as  it  flatters  or  favors  them  ; 
and  as  for  this  theory  of  yours — of  ours,  if  you  will — it  has  fore- 
told me  nothing  but  misfortune." 

"  Thy  horoscope,"  replied  the  astrologer,"  is  indeed  singular 
and  ominous  :  but,  like  my  daughter,  the  exact  minute  (  within 
almost  a  whole  hour  )  of  thy  birth  seems  unknown ;  and  however 
ingeniously  we,  following  the  ancients,  have  contrived  means  for 
correcting  nativities,  our  predictions  (so  long  as  the  exact  period  of 
birth  is  not  ascertained)  remain,  in  my  mind,  always  liable  to 
some  uncertainty.  Indeed,  the  surest  method  of  reducing  the 
supposed  time  to  the  true — that  of  '  Accidents,'  is  but  partially 
given,  as  in  thy  case;  for,  with  a  negligence  that  cannot  be  too 
severely  blamed  or  too  deeply  lamented,  thou  hast  omitted  to 
mark  down,  or  remember,  the  days  on  which  accidents — fevers, 
broken  limbs,  etc. — occurred  to  thee ;  and  this  omission  leaves  a 
cloud  over  the  bright  chapters  of  fate — ' ' 

"  Which,"  interrupted  the  young  man,  "  is  so  much  the  hap- 
pier for  me,  in  that  it  allows  me  some  loophole  for  hope." 

"Yet,"  renewed  the  astrologer,  as  if  resolved  to  deny  his 
friend  any  consolation,  "  thy  character,  and  the  bias  of  thy  habits 
as  well  as  the  peculiarities  of  thy  person — nay,  even  the  moles 
upon  thy  skin — accord  with  thy  proposed  horoscope." 

"  Be  it  so  !  "  said  the  Englishman,  gaily.  "  You  grant  me,  at 
least,  the  fairest  of  earthly  gifts — the  happiness  of  pleasing  that  sex 
which  alone  sweetens  our  human  misfortunes.  That  gift  I  would 
sooner  have,  even  accompanied  as  it  is,  than  all  the  benign  in- 
fluences, without  it." 

"  Yet,"  said  the  astrologer,  "  shalt  thou  even  there  be  met  with 
affliction  ;  for  Saturn  had  the  power  to  thwart  the  star  Venus, 
that  was  disposed  to  favor  thee,  and  evil  may  be  the  result  of  the 
love  thou  inspirest.  There  is  one  thing  remarkable  in  our  science, 
which  is  especially  worthy  of  notice  in  thy  lot.  The  ancients, 
unacquainted  with  the  star  of  Herschel,  seem  also  scarcely  ac- 
quainted with  the  character  which  the  influence  of  that  wayward 
and  melancholy  orb  creates.  Thus,  the  aspect  of  Herschel  neu- 


GODOLPHIN.  115 

tralizes,  in  great  measure,  the  boldness,  and  ambition,  and  pride 
of  heart,  thou  wouldst  otherwise  have  drawn  from  the  felicitous 
configuration  of  the  stars  around  the  Moon  and  Mercury  at  thy 
birth.  That  yearning  for  something  beyond  the  narrow  bounds 
of  the  world,  that  love  for  revery,  that  passionate  romance,  yea, 
thy  very  leaning,  despite  thy  worldly  sense,  to  these  occult  and 
starry  mysteries — all  are  bestowed  on  thee  by  this  new  and  poten- 
tial planet." 

"And  hence,  I  suppose,"  said  the  Englishman,  interested  (as 
the  astrologer  had  declared)  in  spite  of  himself,  ' '  hence  that 
opposition,  in  my  nature,  of  the  worldly  and  romantic  ;  hence,  with 
you,  I  am  the  dreaming  enthusiast ;  but  the  instant  I  regain  the 
living  and  motley  crowd,  I  shake  off  the  influence  with  ease,  and 
become  the  gay  pursuer  of  social  pleasures." 

"  Never  at  heart  gay,"  muttered  the  astrologer  ;  "  Saturn  and 
Herschel  make  not  sincere  mirth-makers."  The  Englishman  did 
not  hear,  or  seem  to  hear,  him. 

"  No,"  resumed  the  young  man,  musingly,  "  no  !  it  is  not 
true  that  there  is  some  counteraction  of  what,  at  times,  I  should 
have  called  my  natural  bent.  Thus,  I  am  bold  enough,  and 
covetous  of  knowledge,  and  not  deaf  to  vanity  ;  and  yet  I  have 
no  ambition.  The  desire  to  rise  seems  to  me  wholly  unalluring  : 
I  scorn  and  contemn  it  as  a  weakness.  But  what  matters  it  ?  so 
much  the  happier  for  me  if,  as  you  predict,  my  life  be  short.  But 
how,  if  so  unambitious  and  so  quiet  of  habit,  how  can  I  imagine 
that  my  death  will  be  violent  as  well  as  premature?  " 

It  was  as  he  spoke  that  the  young  Lucilla,  who,  with  fixed  eyes 
and  lips  apart,  had  been  drinking  in  their  conversation,  suddenly 
rose  and  left  the  room.  They  were  used  to  her  comings  in  and 
her  goings  out  without  cause  or  speech,  and  continued  their  con- 
versation. 

"  Alas  !  "  said  the  visionary;  "can  tranquillity  of  life,  or  care, 
or  prudence,  preserve  us  from  our  destiny  ?  No  sign  is  more 
deadly,  whether,  by  accident  or  murder,  than  that  which  couples 
Hyleg  with  Orion  and  Saturn.  Yet,  thou  mayest  pass  the  year 
in  which  that  danger  is  foretold  thee ;  and,  beyond  that  time, 
peace,  honor,  and  good  fortune,  await  thee.  Better  to  have  the 
menace  of  ill  in  early  life  than  in  its  decline.  Youth  bears  up 
against  misfortune;  but  it  withers  the  heart,  and  crushes  the  soul 
of  age!" 

"After  all,"  said  the  young  guest,  haughtily,  "we  must  do  our 
best  to  contradict  the  starry  evils  by  our  own  internal  philosophy. 
We  can  make  ourselves  independent  of  fate ;  that  independence 
is  better  than  prosperity  ! ' '  Then,  changing  his  tone,  he  added ; 


Il6  GODOLPHIN. 

"But  you  imagine  that,  by  the  power  of  other  arts,  we  may  con- 
trol and  counteract  the  prophecies  of  the  stars — " 

"How  meanest  thou?"  said  the  astrologer,  hastily.  "Thou 
dost  not  suppose  that  alchymy,  which  is  the  servant  of  the  heav- 
enly host,  is  their  opponent?  " 

"Nay,"  answered  the  disciple;  "but  you  allow  that  we  may 
be  enabled  to  ward  off  evils,  and  to  cure  diseases,  otherwise  fatal 
to  us,  by  the  gift  of  Uriel  and  the  charm  of  the  Cabala?" 

"Surely,"  replied  the  visionary;  "butthen,  I  opine  that  the 
discovery  of  these  precious  secrets  was  foretold  to  us  by  the 
Omniscient  Book  at  our  nativity ;  and,  therefore,  though  the  men- 
ace of  evils  be  held  out  to  us,  so  also  is  the  probability  of  their 
correction  or  our  escape.  And  I  must  own  (pursued  the  enthusi- 
ast), that,  to  me,  the  very  culture  of  those  divine  arts  hath  given 
a  consolation  amidst  the  evils  to  which  I  have  been  fated ;  so  true 
seems  it,  that  it  is  not  in  the  outer  nature,  in  the  great  elements, 
and  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth,  but  also  within  ourselves,  that  we 
must  look  for  the  preparations  whereby  we  are  to  achieve  the  wis- 
dom of  Zoroaster  and  Hermes.  We  must  abstract  ourselves  from 
passion  and  earthly  desires.  Lapped  in  a  celestial  revery,  we 
must  work  out.  by  contemplation,  the  essence  from  the  matter  of 
things:  nor  can  we  dart  into  the  soul  of  the  Mystic  World  until 
we  ourselves  have  forgotten  the  body;  and,  by  fast,  by  purity, 
and  by  thought,  have  become,  in  the  flesh  itself,  a  living  soul." 

Much  more,  and  with  an  equal  wildness  of  metaphysical  elo- 
quence, did  the  astrologer  declare  in  praise  of  those  arts  con- 
demned by  the  old  church ;  and  it  doth  indeed  appear,  from  ref- 
erence to  the  numerous  works  of  the  alchymists  and  magians  yet 
extant,  somewhat  hastily  and  unjustly.  For  those  books  all  unite 
in  dwelling  on  the  necessity  of  virtue,  subdued  passions,  and  a 
clear  mind,  in  order  to  become  a  fortunate  and  accomplished 
cabalist — a  precept,  by  the  way,  not  without  its  policy ;  for,  if 
the  disciple  failed,  the  failure  might  be  attributed  to  his  own 
fleshy  imperfections,  not  to  any  deficiency  in  the  truth  of  the 
science. 

The  young  man  listened  to  the  visionary  with  an  earnest  and 
fascinated  attention.  Independent  of  the  dark  interest  always 
attached  to  discourses  of  supernatural  things,  more  especially,  we 
must  allow,  in  the  mouth  of  a  fervent  and  rapt  believer,  there  was 
that  in  the  lauguage  and  very  person  of  the  astrologer  which  inex- 
pressibly enhanced  the  effect  of  the  theme.  Like  most  men 
acquainted  with  the  literature  of  a  country,  but  not  accustomed 
to  daily  conversation  with  its  natives,  the  English  words  and  fash- 
ion of  periods  that  occurred  to  Volktman  were  rather  those  used 


GODOLPHIN.  117 

in  books  than  in  colloquy;  and  a  certain  solemnity  and  slowness 
of  tone,  accom  >anied  with  the  frequent,  almost  constant  use  of 
the  pronoun  singular — the  thou  and  the  thee — gave  a  strangeness 
and  unfamiliar  majesty  to  his  dialect  that  suited  well  with  the  sub- 
jects on  which  he  so  loved  to  dwell.  He  himself  was  lean,  gaunt, 
and  wan  ;  his  cheeks  were  drawn  and  hollow ;  and  thin  locks, 
prematurely  bleached  to  gray,  fell  into  disorder  round  high,  bare 
temples,  in  which  the  thought  that  is  not  of  this  world  had  paled 
the  hue  and  furrowed  the  surface  !  But,  as  may  be  noted  in  many 
imaginative  men,  the  life  that  seemed  faint  and  chill  in  the  rest 
of  the  frame,  collected  itself,  as  in  a  citadel,  within  the  eye. 
Bright,  wild,  and  deep,  the  expression  of  those  large  blue  orbs 
told  the  intense  enthusiasm  of  the  mind  within  ;  and  even  some- 
what thrillingly  communicated  a  part  of  that  emotion  to  those  on 
whom  they  dwelt.  No  painter  could  have  devised,  nor  even 
Volktman  himself,  in  the  fulness  of  his  northern  phantasy,  have 
sculptured  forth,  a  better  image  of  those  pale  and  unearthly  stu- 
dents who,  in  the  darker  ages,  applied  life  and  learning  to  one 
unhallowed  vigil,  the  Hermes  or  the  Gebir  of  the  alchymist's 
empty  science — dreamers,  and  the  martyrs  of  their  dreams. 

In  the  discussion  of  mysteries  which  to  detail  would  only  weary 
while  it  perplexed,  the  reader,  the  enthusiasts  passed  the  greater 
portion  of  the  night ;  and  when  at  length  the  Englishman  rose  to 
depart,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  a  solemn  and  boding  emotion 
agitated  his  breast. 

"We  have  talked,"  said  he,  attempting  a  smile,  "of  things 
above  this  nether  life ;  and  here  we  are  lost,  uncertain.  On  one 
thing,  however,  we  can  decide;  life  itself  is  encompassed  with 
gloom ;  sorrow  and  anxiety  await  even  those  upon  whom  the  stars 
shed  their  most  golden  influence.  We  know  not  one  day  what 
the  next  shall  bring !  No ;  I  repeat  it ;  no ;  in  spite  of  your 
scheme,  and  your  ephemeris,  and  your  election  of  happy  moments. 
But,  come  what  will,  Volktman,  come  all  that  you  foretell  to  me ; 
crosses  in  my  love,  disappointment  in  my  life,  melancholy  in  my 
blood,  and  a  violent  death  in  the  very  flush  of  my  manhood, — ME 
at  least,  ME  !  my  soul,  my  heart,  my  better  part,  you  shall  never 
cast  down,  nor  darken,  nor  deject.  I  move  in  a  certain  and 
serene  circle ;  ambition  cannot  tempt  me  above  it,  nor  misfortune 
cast  me  below ! : ' 

Volktman  looked  at  the  speaker  with  surprise  and  admiration  ; 
the  enthusiasm  of  a  brave  mind  is  the  only  fire  broader  and 
brighter  than  that  of  a  fanatical  one. 

"  Alas  !  my  young  friend,"  he  said,  as  he  clasped  the  hand  of 
his  guest;  "I  would  to  Heaven  that  my  predictions  may  be 


Il8  GODOLPHIN. 

wrong:  often  and  often  they  have  been  erroneous,"  added  he, 
bowing  his  head  humbly  ;  "  they  may  be  so  in  their  reference  to 
thee.  So  young,  so  brilliant,  so  beautiful  too ;  so  brave,  yet  so 
romantic  of  heart,  I  feel  for  all  that  may  happen  to  thee — ay,  far, 
far  more  deeply  than  aught  which  may  be  fated  to  myself ;  for  I 
am  an  old  man  now,  and  long  inured  to  disappointment ;  all  the 
greenness  of  my  life  is  gone :  even  could  I  attain  to  the  Grand 
Secret,  the  knowledge  methinks  would  be  too  late.  And,  at  my 
birth,  my  lot  was  portioned  out  unto  me  in  characters  so  clear, 
that,  while  I  have  had  time  to  acquiesce  in  it,  I  have  had  no  hope 
to  correct  and  change  it.  For  Jupiter  in  Cancer,  removed  from 
the  Ascendant,  and  not  impedited  of  any  other  star,  betokened 
me  indeed  some  expertness  in  science,  but  a  life  of  seclusion,  and 
one  that  should  bring  not  forth  the  fruits  that  its  labor  deserved. 
But  there  is  so  much  in  thy  fate  that  ought  to  be  bright  and  glori- 
ous, that  it  will  be  no  common  destiny  marred  should  the  evil 
influences  and  the  ominous  seasons  prevail  against  thee.  But 
thou  speakest  boldly — boldly,  and  as  one  of  a  high  soul,  though 
it  be  sometimes  clouded  and  led  astray.  And  I,  therefore,  again 
and  again  impress  upon  thee,  it  is  from  thine  own  self,  thine  own 
character,  thine  own  habits,  that  all  evil,  save  that  of  death,  will 
come.  Wear,  then,  I  implore  thee,  wear  in  thy  memory,  as  a 
jewel,  the  first  great  maxim  of  alchymist  and  magian  :  '  SEARCH 
THYSELF — CORRECT  THYSELF — SUBDUE  THYSELF  ; '  it  is  only 
through  the  lamp  of  crystal  that  the  light  will  shine  duly  out." 

"It  is  more  likely  that  the  stars  should  err,"  returned  the  Eng- 
lishman, "than  that  the  human  heart  should  correct  itself  of 
error:  adieu  !  " 

He  left  the  room,  and  proceeded  along  a  passage  that  led  to 
the  outer  door.  Ere  he  reached  it,  another  door  opened  suddenly, 
and  the  face  of  Lucilla  broke  forth  upon  him.  She  held  a  light 
in  her  hand;  and  as  she  gazed  on  the  .Englishman,  he  saw  that 
her  face  was  very  pale,  and  that  she  had  been  weeping.  She 
looked  at  him  long  and  earnestly,  and  the  look  affected  him 
strangely ;  he  broke  silence,  which  at  first  it  appeared  to  him 
difficult  to  do. 

"Good-night,  my  pretty  friend,"  said  he  :  "  shall  I  bring  you 
some  flowers  to-morrow  ?  " 

Lucilla  burst  into  a  wild  eltritch  laugh ;  and  abruptly  closing 
the  door,  left  him  in  darkness. 

The  cool  air  of  the  breaking  dawn  came  freshly  to  the  cheek 
of  our  countryman ;  yet,  still,  an  unpleasant  and  heavy  sensation 
sat  at  his  heart.  His  nerves,  previously  weakened  by  his  long 
commune  with  the  visionary,  and  the  effect  it  had  produced,  yet 


CJODOLPHItf.  tig 

tingled  and  thrilled  with  the  abrupt  laugh  and  meaning  counten- 
ance of  that  strange  girl,  who  differed  so  widely  from  all  others 
of  her  years.  The  stars  were  growing  pale  and  ghostly,  and 
there  was  a  mournful  and  dim  haze  around  the  moon. 

"Ye  look  ominously  upon  me,"  said  he,  half  aloud,  as  his 
eyes  fixed  their  gaze  above  ;  and  the  excitement  of  his  spirit 
spread  to  his  language:  "ye  on  whom,  if  our  lore  be  faithful, 
the  Most  High  hath  written  the  letters  of  our  mortal  doom.  And 
if  ye  rule  the  tides  of  the  great  deep,  and  the  changes  of  the 
rolling  year,  what  is  there  out  of  reason  or  nature  in  our  belief 
that  ye  hold  the  same  sympathetic  and  unseen  influence  over  the 
blood  and  heart,  which  are  the  character  (and  the  character 
makes  the  conduct)  of  a  man?"  Pursuing  his  soliloquy  of 
thought,  and  finding  reasons  for  a  credulity  that  afforded  to  him 
but  little  cause  for  pleasure  or  hope,  the  Englishman  took  his  way 
to  St.  Sebastian's  gate. 

There  was,  in  truth,  much  in  the  traveller's  character  that  cor- 
responded with  that  which  was  attributed  and  destined  to  one  to 
whom  the  heavens  had  given  a  horoscope  answering  to  his  own ; 
and  it  was  this  conviction,  rather  than  any  accidental  coincidence 
in  events,  which  had  first  led  him  to  pore  with  a  deep  attention 
over  the  vain  but  imposing  prophecies  of  judicial  astrology. 
Possessed  of  all  the  powers  that  enable  men  to  rise ;  ardent,  yet 
ordinarily  shrewd  ;  eloquent,  witty,  brave ;  and,  though  not  what 
may  be  termed  versatile,  possessing  that  rare  art  of  concentrating 
the  faculties  which  enables  the  possessor  rapidly  and  thoroughly 
to  master  whatsoever  once  arrests  the  attention,  he  yet  despised 
all  that  would  have  brought  these  endowments  into  full  and  legi- 
timate display.  He  lived  only  for  enjoyment.  A  passionate 
lover  of  women,  music,  letters,  and  the  arts,  it  was  society,  not 
the  world,  which  made  the  sphere  and  end  of  his  existence.  Yet 
was  he  no  vulgar  and  commonplace  epicurean :  he  lived  for 
enjoyment;  but  that  enjoyment  was  mainly  formed  from  elements 
wearisome  to  more  ordinary  natures.  Revery,  contemplation, 
loneliness,  were  at  times  dearer  to  him  than  the  softer  and  more 
Aristippean  delights.  His  energies  were  called  forth  in  society, 
but  he  was  scarcely  social.  Trained  from  his  early  boyhood  to 
solitude,  he  was  seldom  weary  of  being  alone.  He  sought  the 
crowd,  not  to  amuse  himself,  but  to  observe  others.  The  world 
to  him  was  less  as  a  theatre  on  which  he  was  to  play  a  part,  than 
as  a  book  in  which  he  loved  to  decipher  the  enigmas  of  wisdon. 
He  observed  all  that  passed  around  him.  No  sprightly  cavalier 
at  any  time,  the  charm  that  he  exercised  at  will  over  his  compan- 
ions was  that  of  softness,  not  vivacity.  But  amidst  that  silken 


I2O  GODOLPHIN. 

blandness  of  demeanor,  the  lynx  eye  of  Remark  never  slept.  He 
penetrated  character  at  a  glance,  but  he  seldom  made  use  of  his 
knowledge.  He  found  a  pleasure  in  reading  men,  but  a  fatigue 
in  governing  them.  And  thus,  consummately  skilled  as  he  was  in 
the  science  du  monde,  he  often  allowed  himself  to  appear  ignorant 
of  its  practice.  Forming  in  his  mind  a  beau  ideal  of  friendship 
and  of  love,  he  never  found  enough  in  the  realities  long  to  engage 
his  affection.  Thus,  with  women  he  was  considered  fickle,  and 
with  men  he  had  no  intimate  companionship.  This  trait  of 
character  is  common  with  persons  of  genius ;  and,  owing  to  too 
large  an  overflow  of  heart,  they  are  frequently  considered  heart- 
less. There  is  always,  however,  danger  that  a  character  of  this 
kind  should  become  with  years  what  it  seems;  what  it  soon  learns 
to  despise.  Nothing  steels  the  affections  like  contempt. 

The  next  morning  an  express  from  England  reached  the  young 
traveller.  His  father  was  dangerously  ill ;  nor  was  it  expected 
that  the  utmost  diligence  would  enable  the  young  man  to  receive 
his  last  blessing.  The  Englishman,  appalled  and  terror-stricken, 
recalled  his  interview  with  the  astrologer.  Nothing  so  effectually 
dismays  us  as  to  feel  a  confirmation  of  some  idea  of  supernatural 
dread  that  has  already  found  entrance  within  our  reason ;  and  of 
all  supernatural  belief,  that  of  being  compelled  by  a  predecree, 
and  thus  being  the  mere  tools  and  puppets  of  a  dark  and  relent- 
less fate,  seems  the  most  fraught  at  once  with  abasement  and  with 
horror. 

The  Englishman  left  Rome  that  morning,  and  sent  only  a  ver- 
bal and  hasty  message  to  the  astrologer,  announcing  the  cause  of 
his  departure.  Volktman  was  a  man  of  excellent  heart :  but  one 
would  scarcely  like  to  inquire,  whether  exultation  at  the  triumph 
of  his  prediction  was  not  with  him  a  far  more  powerful  sentiment 
than  grief  at  the  misfortune  to  his  friend  ! 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

THE  YOUTH  OF  LUCILLA  VOLKTMAN. — A  MYSTERIOUS  CONVERSATION. 
— THE  RETURN  OF  ONE  UNLOCKED  FOR. 

TIME  went  slowly  on,  and  Lucilla  grew  up  in  beauty.  The 
stranger  traits  of  her  character  increased  in  strength,  but  perhaps 
in  the  natural  bashfulness  of  maidenhood  they  became  more  lat- 
ent. At  the  age  of  fifteen  her  elastic  shape  had  grown  round  and 
full,  and  the  wild  girl  had  already  ripened  to  the  woman.  An  ex- 
pression of  thought,  when  the  play  of  her  features  was  in  repose, 
that  dwelt  upon  her  lip  and  forehead,  gave  her  the  appearance  of 


GODOLPHIN.  121 

being  two  or  three  years  older  than  she  was ;  but  again,  when 
her  natural  vivacity  returned — when  the  clear  and  buoyant  music 
of  her  gay  laugh  rang  out,  or  when  the  cool  air  and  bright  sky  of 
morning  sent  the  blood  to  her  cheek  and  the  zephyr  to  her  step, 
her  face  became  as  the  face  of  childhood,  and  contrasted  with  a 
singular  and  dangerous  loveliness  the  rich  development  of  her 
form. 

And  still  was  Lucilla  Volktman  a  stranger  to  all  that  savored 
of  the  world ;  the  company  of  others  of  her  sex  and  age  never 
drew  forth  her  emotions  from  their  resting-place  : 

And  Nature  said,  a  lovelier  flower 
On  earth  was  never  sown : 

****** 

Myself  will  to  my  darling  be 

Both  law  and  impulse  ;  and  with  me 

The  girl,  in  rock  and  plain, 
In  earth  and  heaven,  in  glade  and  bower, 
Shall  feel  an  overseeing  power 

To  kindle  or  restrain. 

The  stars  of  midnight  shall  be  dear 
To  her ;  and  she  shall  lean  her  ear 

In  many  a  secret  place ; 
Where  rivulets  dance  their  wayward  round, 
And  beauty,  born  of  murmuring  sound, 

Shall  pass  into  her  face. 

WORDSWORTH. 

These  lines  have  occurred  to  me  again  and  again,  as  I  looked 
on  the  face  of  her  to  whom  I  have  applied  them.  And,  remem- 
bering as  I  do  its  radiance  and  glory  in  her  happier  moments,  I 
can  scarcely  persuade  myself  to  notice  the  faults  and  heats  of 
temper  which  at  times  dashed  away  all  its  lustre  and  gladness. 
Unrestrained  and  fervid,  she  gave  way  to  the  irritation  or  grief 
of  the  moment  with  a  violence  that  would  have  terrified  any  one 
who  beheld  her  at  such  times.  But  it  rarely  happened  that  the 
scene  had  its  witness  even  in  her  father,  for  she  fled  to  the  lone- 
liest spot  she  could  find  to  indulge  these  emotions ;  and  perhaps 
even  the  agony  they  occasion — an  agony  convulsing  the  heart  and 
whole  of  her  impassioned  frame — took  a  sort  of  luxury  from  the 
solitary  and  unchecked  nature  of  its  indulgence. 

Volktman  continued  his  pursuits  with  an  ardor  that  increased, 
as  do  ajl  species  of  monomania,  with  increasing  years ;  and  in 
the  accidental  truth  of  some  of  his  predictions  he  forgot  the  er- 
roneous result  of  the  rest.  H*  Corresponded  at  times  with  the 


122  GODOLPHW. 

Englishman,  who,  after  a  short  sojourn  in  England,  had  returned 
to  the  Continent,  and  was  now  making  a  prolonged  tour  through 
its  northern  capitals. 

Very  different,  indeed,  from  the  astrologer's  occupations  were 
those  of  the  wanderer ;  and  time,  dissipation,  and  a  maturer  in- 
tellect, had  cured  the  latter  of  his  boyish  tendency  to  studies  so  idle 
and  so  vain.  Yet  he  always  looked  back  with  an  undefined  and 
unconquered  interest  to  the  period  of  his  acquaintance  with  the 
astrologer;  to  their  long  and  thrilling  watches  in  the  night  sea- 
son ;  to  the  contagious  fervor  of  faith  breathing  from  the  vision- 
ary; his  dark  and  restless  excursions  into  that  remote  science 
associated  with  the  legends  of  eldest  time,  and  of 

The  crew,  who,  under  names  of  old  renown, 
Osiris,  Isis,  Orus,  and  their  train, 
With  monstrous  shapes  and  sorceries,  abused 
Fanatic  Egypt  and  her  priests. 

One  night,  four  years  after  the  last  scene  we  have  described  in 
the  astrologer's  house,  Volktman  was  sitting  alone  in  his  favorite 
room.  Before  him  was  a  calculation  on  which  the  ink  was  scarce- 
ly dry.  His  face  leant  on  his  breast,  and  he  seemed  buried  in 
thought.  His  health  had  been  of  late  gradually  declining ;  and 
it  might  be  seen  upon  his  worn  brow  and  attenuated  frame  that 
death  was  already  preparing  to  withdraw  the  visionary  from  a 
world  whose  substantial  enjoyments  he  had  so  sparingly  tasted. 

Lucilla  had  been  banished  from  his  chamber  during  the  day. 
She  now  knew  that  his  occupation  was  over,  and  entered  the  room 
with  his  evening  repast;  that  frugal  meal,  common  with  the  Ital- 
ians— the  polenta  (made  of  Indian  corn),  the  bread  and  the 
fruits,  which,  after  the  fashion  of  students,  he  devoured  uncon- 
sciously, and  would  not  have  remembered  one  hour  after  whether 
or  not  it  had  been  tasted  ! 

"  Sit  thee  down,  child,"  said  he  to  Lucilla,  kindly;  "  sit  thee 
down." 

Lucilla  obeyed,  and  took  her  seat  upon  the  very  stool  on  which 
she  had  been  seated  the  last  night  on  which  the  Englishman  had 
seen  her. 

"I  have  been  thinking,"  said  Volktman,  as  he  placed  his  hand 
on  his  daughter's  head,  "that  I  shall  soon  leave  thee;  and  I 
should  like  to  see  thee  protected  by  another  before  my  own  de- 
parture." 

"Ah,  father,"  said  Lucilla,  as  the  tears  rushed  to  her  eyes, 
"  do  not  talk  thus  !  Indeed,  indeed,  you  must  not  indulge  in  this 


CJODOLPHIti.  1 23 

peipetual  gloom  and  seclusion  of  life.  You  promised  to  take  me 
with  you,  some  day  this  week,  to  the  Vatican.  Do  let  it  be  to- 
morrow ;  the  weather  has  been  so  fine  lately ;  and  who  knows 
how  long  it  may  last?  " 

"True,"  said  Volktman  ;  "  and  to-morrow  will  not,  I  think, 
be  unfavorable  to  our  stirring  abroad,  for  the  moon  will  be  of  the 
same  age  as  at  my  birth — an  accident  that  thou  wilt  note,  my 
child,  to  be  especially  auspicious  towards  any  enterprise." 

The  poor  astrologer  so  rarely  stirred  from  his  home  that  he  did 
well  to  consider  a  walk  of  a  mile  or  two  in  the  light  of  an  enter- 
prise. "  I  have  wished,"  continued  he,  after  a  pause,  "  that  I 
might  see  our  English  friend  once  more — that  is,  ere  long.  For, 
to  tell  thee  the  truth,  Lucilla,  certain  events  happening  unto  him 
do,  strangely  enough,  occur  about  the  same  time  as  that  in  which 
events,  equally  boding,  will  befall  thee.  This  coincidence  it  was 
which  contributed  to  make  me  assume  so  warm  an  interest  in  the 
lot  of  a  stranger.  I  would  I  might  see  him  soon." 

Lucilla's  beautiful  breast  heaved,  and  her  face  was  covered 
with  blushes  :  these  were  symptoms  of  a  disorder  that  never  oc- 
curred to  the  recluse. 

"  Thou  rememberest  the  foreigner?  "  asked  Volktman,  after  a 
pause. 

"Yes,"  said  Lucilla,  half  inaudibly. 

"I  have  not  heard  from  him  of  late:  I  will  make  question 
concerning  him  ere  the  cock  crow." 

"Nay,  my  father!"  said  Lucilla,  quickly:  "not  to-night: 
you  want  rest ;  your  eyes  are  heavy." 

"  Girl,"  said  the  mystic,  "the  soul  sleepeth  not,  nor  wanteth 
sleep  :  even  as  the  stars,  to  which  (as  the  Arabian  saith)  there  is 
also  a  soul,  wherewith  an  intent  passion  of  our  own  doth  make  an 
union — so  that  we,  by  an  unslumbering  diligence,  do  constitute 
ourselves  a  part  of  the  heaven  itself ! — even,  I  say,  as  the  stars 
may  vanish  from  the  human  eye,  nor  be  seen  in  the  common  day 
— though  all  the  while  their  course  is  stopped  not,  nor  their  voices 
dumb — even  so  doth  the  soul  of  man  retire,  as  it  were,  into  a 
seeming  sleep  and  torpor,  yet  it  worketh  all  the  same,  and  per- 
haps with  a  less  impeded  power,  in  that  it  is  more  free  from  com- 
mon obstruction  and  trivial  hindrance.  And  if  I  purpose  to  con- 
fer this  night  with  the  '  Intelligence '  that  ruleth  earth  and  earth's 
beings,  concerning  this  stranger,  it  will  not  be  by  the  vigil  and 
the  scheme,  but  by  the  very  sleep  which  thou  imaginest,  in  thy 
mental  darkness,  would  deprive  me  of  the  resources  of  my  art." 

"Can  you  really,  then,  my  father,"  said  Lucilla,  in  a  tone 
half-anxious,  half-timid ;  ' '  Can  you  really,  at  will,  conjure  up  in 


124  GODOLPHIN. 

your  dreams  the  persons  you  wish  to  see ;  or  draw  from  sleep  any 
oracle  concerning  their  present  state?  " 

"  Of  a  surety,"  answered  the  astrologer ;  "it  is  one  of  the 
great — though  not  perchance  the  most  gifted — of  our  endow- 
ments." 

"  Can  you  teach  me  the  method?  "  asked  Lucilla,  gravely. 

"All  that  relates  to  the  art  I  can,"  rejoined  the  mystic:  "but 
the  chief  and  main  power  rests  with  thyself.  For  know,  my 
daughter,  that  one  who  seeks  the  wisdom  that  is  above  the  earth, 
must  cultivate  and  excite,  with  long  labor  and  deep  thought,  his 
least  earthly  faculty." 

Here  the  visionary,  observing  that  the  countenance  of  Lucilla 
was  stamped  with  a  fixed  attention,  which  she  did  not  often  bestow 
upon  his  metaphysical  exordiums,  paused  for  a  moment ;  and 
then  pursued  the  theme  with  the  tone  of  one  desirous  of  making 
himself  at  once  as  clear  and  impressive  as  the  nature  of  an 
abstruse  science  would  allow. 

"  There  are  two  things  in  the  outer  creation,  which,  according 
to  the  great  Hermes,  suffice  for  the  operation  of  all  that  is  wonder- 
ful and  glorious — Fire  and  Earth.  Even  so,  my  child,  there  are 
in  the  human  mind  two  powers  that  affect  all  of  which  our  nature 
is  capable — REASON  and  IMAGINATION.  Now  mankind — less  wise 
in  themselves  than  in  the  outer  world — have  cultivated,  for  the 
most  part,  but  one  of  these  faculties ;  and  that,  the  inferior  and 
more  passive,  REASON.  They  have  tilled  the  earth  of  the  human 
heart,  but  suffered  its  fire  to  remain  dormant,  or  waste  itself  in 
chance  and  frivolous  directions.  Hence  the  insufficiency  of 
human  knowledge.  Inventions  founded  only  on  reason  move 
within  a  circle  from  which  their  escape  is  momentary  and  trivial. 
When  some  few,  endowed  with  a  juster  instinct,  have  had  recourse 
to  the  diviner  element,  IMAGINATION,  thou  wilt  observe  that  they 
have  used  it  only  in  the  service  of  the  lighter  arts,  and  those 
chiefly  disconnected  from  REASON.  Such  is  poetry,  and  music, 
and  other  delicious  fabrications  of  genius,  that  amuse  men,  soften 
men,  but  advance  them  not.  They  have,  with  but  rare  excep- 
tions, left  this  glorious  and  winged  faculty  utterly  passive  in  the 
service  of  Philosophy.  There,  REASON  alone  has  been  admitted, 
and  IMAGINATION  hath  been  carefully  banished,  as  an  erratic  and 
deceitful  meteor.  Now  mark  me,  child  :  I,  noting  this  our  error 
in  early  youth,  did  resolve  to  see  what  might  be  effected  by  the 
culture  of  this  renounced  and  maltreated  element ;  and  finding, 
as  I  proceeded  in  the  studies  that  grew  from  this  desire,  by  the 
occult  yet  guiding  writings  of  the  great  philosophers  of  old,  that 
they  had  forestalled  me  in  this  discovery,  I  resolved  to  learn, 


GODOLPH1N.  125 

from  their  experience,  by  what  means  the  imagination  is  best  fos- 
tered, and,  as  it  were,  sublimed. 

"Anxiously  following  their  precepts,  the  truth  of  which  soon 
appeared,  I  found  that  solitude,  fast,  intense  revery  upon  the  one 
theme  on  which  we  desired  knowledge  were  the  true  elements  and 
purifiers  of  this  glorious  faculty.  It  was  by  these  means,  and  by 
this  power,  that  men  so  far  behind  us  in  lesser  lore,  achieved,  on 
the  mooned  plains  of  Chaldea  and  by  the  dark  waters  of  Egypt, 
their  penetration  into  the  womb  of  Event ;  by  these  means,  and 
this  power,  the  solitaries  of  the  Gothic  time  not  only  attained 
to  the  most  intricate  arcana  of  the  stars,  but  to  the  empire  of  the 
spirits  about,  above,  and  beneath  the  earth :  a  power,  indeed, 
disputed  by  the  presumptuous  sophists  of  the  present  time,  but  of 
which  their  writings  yet  contain  ample  proof.  Nay,  by  the  con- 
stant feeding,  and  impressing,  and  moulding,  and  refining,  and 
heightening,  the  imaginative  power,  I  do  conceive  that  even  the 
false  prophets  and  the  evil  practitioners  of  the  blacker  cabala 
clomb  unto  the  power  seemingly  inconceivable — the  power  of 
accomplishing  miracles  and  prodigies,  that  to  appearance  belie, 
but  in  truth  verify,  the  course  of  nature.  By  this  spirit  within 
the  flesh,  we  grow  from  the  flesh,  and  may  see,  and  at  length 
invoke  the  souls  of  the  dead,  and  receive  warnings,  and  hear 
omens,  and  girdle  our  sleep  with  dreams. 

"  Not  unto  me,"  contiued  thecabalist,  in  a  lowlier  tone,  "  have 
been  vouchsafed  all  these  gifts  :  for  I  began  the  art  when  the  first 
fire  of  youth  was  dim  within  me  ;  and  it  was  therefore  with  duller 
and  already  earth-clogged  pinions  that  I  sought  to  rise.  Some- 
thing, however,  I  have  won  as  a  recompense  for  austere  absti- 
nence and  much  labor  ;  and  this  power  over  the  land  of  dreams 
is  at  least  within  my  command/' 

"  Then,"  said  Lucilla,  in  a  disappointed  tone,  "it  is  only  by 
a  long  course  of  indulgence  to  the  fervor  of  the  imagination,  and 
not  by  spell  or  charm,  that  one  can  gain  a  similar  power?  " 

"Not  wholly  so,  my  daughter,"  replied  the  mystic  ;  "they 
who  do  so  excite,  and  have  so  raised  the  diviner  faculty,  can 
alone  possess  the  certain  and  invariable  power  over  dreams,  even 
without  charms  and  talismans :  but  the  most  dull  or  idle  may 
hope  to  do  so  with  just  confidence  (though  not  certainty)  by  help 
of  skill,  and  by  directing  the  full  force  of  their  half-roused  fancy 
towards  the  person  or  object  they  wish  to  see  reflected  in  the  glass 
of  Sleep." 

"And  what  means  should  the  uninitiated  employ?"  asked 
Lucilla,  in  a  tone  betokening  her  interest. 


126  GODOLPHIN. 

"I  will  tell  thee,"  answered  the  astrologer.  "Thou  must 
inscribe  on  a  white  parchment  an  image  of  the  sun." 

"As  how?"  interrupted  Lucilla. 

"  Thus  !  "  said  the  astrologer,  drawing  from  among  his  papers 
one  inscribed  with  the  figure  of  a  man  asleep  on  the  bosom  of  an 
angel.  "  This  was  made  at  a  potential  and  appointed  time,  when 
the  sun  was  in  the  Ninth  of  the  Celestial  Houses,  and  the  Lion 
shook  his  bright  mane  as  he  ascended  the  blue  mount.  Observe, 
that  on  the  figure  must  be  written  thy  desire- — the  name  of  the 
person  thou  wishest  to  see,  or  the  thing  thou  wouldst  have  fore- 
shown :  then,  having  prepared  and  brought  the  mind  to  a  faith  in 
the  effect — for,  without  faith,  the  imagination  lies  inert  and  life- 
less— this  image  will  be  placed  under  the  head  of  the  invoker,  and 
when  the  moon  goeth  through  the  sign  which  was  in  the  Ninth 
House  of  his  nativity,  the  Dream  will  glide  into  him,  and  his  soul 
walk  with  the  spirit  of  the  vision." 

"  Give  me  the  image,"  said  Lucilla,  eagerly. 

The  mystic  hesitated.  "No,  Lucilla,"  said  he  at  length;  "no, 
it  is  a  dark  and  comfortless  path,  that  of  prescience  and  unearth- 
ly knowledge,  save  to  the  few  that  walk  it  with  a  gifted  light  and 
a  fearless  soul.  It  is  not  for  women  or  children — nay,  for  few 
amongst  men :  it  withers  up  the  sap  of  life,  and  makes  the  hair 
gray  before  its  time.  No,  no  ;  take  the  broad  sunshine,  and  the 
brief  but  sweet  flowers  of  earth  ;  they  are  better  for  thee,  my 
child,  and  for  thy  years,  than  the  fever  and  hope  of  the  night- 
dream,  and  the  planetary  influence." 

So  saying,  the  astrologer  replaced  the  image  within  the  leaves 
of  one  of  his  books ;  and  with  a  prudence  not  common  to  him, 
thrust  the  volume  into  a  drawer,  which  he  locked.  The  fair  face 
of  Lucilla  became  clouded,  but  the  ill  health  of  her  father  imposed 
a  restraint  on  her  wild  temper. 

Just  at  that  moment  the  door  slowly  opened,  and  the  English- 
man stood  before  the  daughter  and  sire.  They  did  not  note  him 
at  first.  The  solitary  servant  of  the  sage  had  admitted  him  ;  he 
had  proceeded,  without  ceremony,  to  the  well-remembered  apart- 
ment. 

As  he  now  stood  gazing  on  the  pair,  he  observed,  with  an  in- 
ward smile,  how  exactly  their  present  attitudes  (as  well  as  the  old 
aspect  of  the  scene)  resembled  those  in  which  he  had  broken  upon 
them  on  the  last  evening  he  had  visited  that  chamber ;  the  father, 
bending  over  the  old,  worn,  quaint  table ;  and  the  daughter 
seated  beside  him  on  the  same  low  stool.  The  character  of  their 
countenances  struck  him,  too,  as  wearing  the  same  ominous  ex- 
pression as  when  those  countenances  had  chilled  him  on  that  even- 


GODOLPHIN.  127 

ing.  For  Volktman's  features  were  impressed  with  the  sadness 
that  breathed  from,  and  caused,  his  prohibition  to  his  daughter; 
and  that  prohibition  had  given  to  her  features  an  abstraction  and 
shadow,  similar  to  the  dejection  they  had  worn  on  the  night  we 
recur  to. 

This  remembered  coincidence  did  not  cheer  the  spirits  of  the 
young  traveller;  he  muttered  to  himself;  and  then,  as  if  anxious 
to  break  the  silence,  moved  forward  with  a  heavy  step. 

Volktman  started  at  the  sound ;  and  looking  up,  seemed  liter- 
ally electrified  by  this  sudden  apparition  of  one  whom  he  had  so 
lately  expressed  his  desire  to  see.  His  lips  muttered  the  intruder's 
name,  one  well  known  to  the  reader  (it  was  the  name  of  Godol- 
phin)  and  then  closed ;  but  Lucilla  sprang  from  her  seat,  and, 
clasping  her  hands  joyously  together,  darted  forward  till  she  came 
within  a  foot  of  the  unexpected  visitor.  There,  she  abruptly  ar- 
rested herself;  blushed  deeply;  and  stood  before  him,  humbled, 
agitated,  but  all  vivid  with  delight. 

"  What,  is  this  Lucilla?  "  said  Godolphin,  admiringly :  "  how 
beautiful  she  is  grown  !  "  and  advancing,  he  saluted,  with  a  light 
and  fraternal  kiss,  her  girlish  and  damask  cheek :  then,  without 
heeding  her  confusion,  he  turned  to  the  astrologer,  who  by  this 
time  had  a  little  recovered  from  his  amaze. 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

THE  EFFECT  OF  YEARS  AND  EXPERIENCE. — THE  ITALIAN  CHARACTER. 

GODOLPHIN  now  came  almost  daily  to  the  astrologer's  abode. 
He  was  shocked  to  perceive  the  physical  alteration  four  years  had 
wrought  in  his  singular  friend ;  and  with  the  warmth  of  a  heart 
naturally  kind  he  sought  to  contribute  to  the  comfort  and  enjoy- 
ment of  a  life  that  was  evidently  drawing  to  a  close. 

Godolphin's  company  seemed  to  give  Volktman  a  pleasure 
which  nothing  else  could  afford  him.  He  loved  to  converse  on 
the  various  incidents  that  had  occurred  to  each  since  they  met ; 
and,  in  whatsoever  Godolphin  communicated  to  him,  the  mystic 
sought  to  impress  upon  his  friend's  attention  the  fulfilment  of  an 
astrological  prediction. 

Godolphin,  though  no  longer  impressed  with  a  belief  in  the 
visionary's  science,  did  not  affect  to  combat  his  assertions.  He 
had  not,  in  his  progress  through  life,  found  much  to  shake  his 
habitual  indolence  in  ordinary  affairs ;  and  it  was  no  easy  matter 
to  provoke  one  of  his  quiet  temper  and  self-indulging  wisdom  into 
conversational  dispute.  Besides,  who  argues  with  fanaticism  ? 


1 28  GODOLPHIN. 

Since  the  young  idealist  had  left  England,  the  elements  of  his 
character  had  been  slowly  performing  the  ordination  of  time,  and 
working  their  due  change  in  its  general  aspect.  The  warm  foun- 
tains of  youth  flowed  not  so  freely  as  before :  the  selfishness  that 
always  comes,  sooner  or  later,  to  solitary  men  of  the  world,  had 
gradually  mingled  itself  with  all  channels  of  his  heart.  The 
brooding  and  thoughtful  disposition  of  his  faculties  having  turned, 
from  romance  to  what  he  deemed  philosophy,  that  which  once 
was  enthusiasm  had  hardened  into  wisdom.  He  neither  hated 
men,  nor  loved  them  with  a  sanguine  philanthropy ;  he  viewed 
them  with  cool  and  discerning  eyes.  He  did  not  think  it  within 
the  power  of  governments  to  make  the  mass,  in  any  country,  much 
happier  or  more  elevated  than  they  are.  Republics,  he  was  wont 
to  say,  favored  aristocratic  virtues,  and  despotisms  extinguished 
them :  but,  whether  in  a  monarchy  or  republic,  the  hewers  of 
wood  and  the  drawers  of  waters,  the  multitude,  still  remained  in- 
trinsically the  same. 

This  theory  heightened  his  indifference  to  ambition.  The  watch- 
words of  party  appeared  to  him  ridiculous ;  and  politics  in  gen- 
eral— what  a  great  moralist  termed  one  question  in  particular — a 
shuttlecock  kept  up  by  the  contention  of  noisy  children.  His 
mind  thus  rested  as  to  all  public  matters  in  a  state  of  quietude, 
and  covered  over  with  the  mantle  of  a  most  false,  a  most  perilous, 
philosophy.  His  appetites  to  pleasure  had  grown  somewhat  dulled 
by  experience,  but  he  was  as  yet  neither  sated  nor  discontented. 
One  feeling  at  his  breast  still  remained  scarcely  diminished  of  its 
effect,  when  the  string  was  touched  :  his  tender  remembrance  of 
Constance;  and  this  had  prevented  any  subsequent  but  momen- 
tary attachment  deepening  into  love.  Thus,  at  the  age  of  seven  - 
and-twenty,  Percy  Godolphin  reappears  on  our  stage. 

There  was  a  great  deal  in  the  Italian  character  that  our  trav- 
eller liked :  its  love  of  ease,  reduced  into  a  system ;  its  courtesy  ; 
its  content  with  the  world  as  it  is;  its  moral  apathy  as  regards  all 
that  agitates  life,  save  one  passion  ;  and  the  universal  tenderness, 
ardor,  and  delicacy  which,  in  that  passion,  it  ennobles  itself  in 
displaying.  The  commonest  peasant  of  Rome  or  Naples,  though 
not  perhaps  in  the  freer  land  of  Tuscany,  can  comprehend  all  the 
romance  and  mystery  of  the  most  subtle  species  of  love ;  all  that 
it  requires,  in  England,  the  idle  habits  of  aristocracy,  or  the  sen- 
sitive fibre  of  genius,  even  to  conceive.  And  what  is  yet  stranger, 
the  worn-out  debauchee,  sage  with  an  experience  and  variety  of 
licentiousness  which  come  not  within  the  compass  of  a  northern 
profligacy,  remains  alive  to  the  earliest  and  most  innocent  senti- 


GODOLPHIN.  129 

merits  of  the  passion.      And  if  Platonism  in  its  coldest  purity 
exist  on  earth,  it  is  among  the  Aretins  of  southern  Italy. 

This  unworldly  refinement,  amidst  so  much  worldly  callous- 
ness, was  a  peculiarity  that  afforded  perpetual  amusement  to  the 
nice  eye  and  subtle  judgment  of  Godolphin.  He  loved  not  to 
note  the  common  elements  of  character ;  whatever  was  most 
abstract  and  difficult  to  analyze  pleased  him  most.  He  mixed 
then  much  with  the  Romans,  and  was  a  favorite  amongst 
them ;  but,  during  his  present  visit  to  the  Immortal  City,  he  did 
not,  how  distantly  soever,  associate  with  the  English.  His  care- 
lessness of  show,  and  the  independence  of  a  single  man  from 
burdensome  connections,  rendered  his  income  fully  competent  to 
his  wants;  but,  like  many  proud  men,  he  was  not  willing  to 
make  it  seem,  even  to  himself,  as  a  comparative  poverty,  beside 
the  lavish  expenses  of  his  ostentatious  countrymen.  Travel, 
moreover,  had  augmented  those  storas  of  reflection  which  rob 
solitude  of  ennui. 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

MAGNETISM. — SYMPATHY. — THE      RETURN     OF     ELEMENTS     TO 
ELEMENTS. 

DAILY  did  the  health  of  Volktman  decline ;  Lucilla  was  the 
only  one  ignorant  of  his  danger.  She  had  never  seen  the  gradual 
approaches  of  death  :  her  mother's  abrupt  and  rapid  illness  made 
the  whole  of  her  experience  of  disease.  Physicians  and  dark 
rooms  were  necessarily  coupled  in  her  mind  with  all  graver  mala- 
dies; and  as  the  astrologer,  wrapt  in  his  calculations,  altered 
not  any  of  his  habits,  and  was  insensible  to  pain,  she  fondly 
attributed  his  occasional  complaints  to  the  melancholy  induced 
by  seclusion.  With  sedentary  men,  diseases  being  often  those 
connected  with  the  organization  of  the  heart,  do  not  unusually 
terminate  suddenly:  it  was  so  with  Volktman. 

One  day  he  was  alone  with  Godolphin,  and  their  conversation 
turned  upon  one  of  the  doctrines  of  the  old  Magnetism — a  doc- 
trine which,  depending  as  it  does  so  much  upon  a  seeming  refer- 
ence to  experience,  survived  the  rest  of  its  associates,  and  is  still 
not  wholly  out  of  repute  among  the  wild  imaginations  of  Germany. 

"One  of  the  most  remarkable  and  abstruse  points  in  what 
students  call  metaphysics/'  said  Volktman,  "is  sympathy;  the 
first  principle,  according  to  some,  of  all  human  virtue.  It  is 
this,  say  they,  which  makes  men  just,  humane,  charitable.  When 
one  who  has  ever  heard  of  the  duty  of  assisting  his  neighbor, 

9 


130  GODOLPHIN. 

sees  another  drowning,  he  plunges  into  the  water  and  saves  him. 
Why?  Because  involuntarily,  and  at  once,  his  imagination  places 
himself  in  the  situation  of  the  stranger:  the  pain  he  would  exper- 
ience in  the  watery  death  glances  across  him  :  from  this  pain  he 
hastens,  without  analyzing  its  cause,  to  deliver  himself. 

"  Humanity  is  thus  taught  him  by  sympathy.  Where  is  this 
sympathy  placed  ?  In  the  nerves :  the  nerves  are  the  communi- 
cants with  outward  nature  ;  the  more  delicate  the  nerves,  the 
finer  the  sympathies;  hence,  women  and  children  are  more  alive 
to  sympathy  than  men.  Well,  mark  me :  do  not  these  nerves 
have  attraction  and  sympathy,  not  only  with  human  suffering,  but 
with  the  powers  of  what  is  falsely  termed  inanimate  nature  ?  Do 
not  the  winds,  the  influences  of  the  weather  and  the  seasons,  act 
confessedly  upon  them  ?  And  if  one  part  of  nature,  why  not 
another,  inseparably  connected  too  with  that  part?  If  the  weather 
and  seasons  have  sympathy  with  the  nerves,  why  not  the  moon 
and  stars,  by  which  the  weather  and  the  seasons  are  influenced 
and  changed  ?  Ye  of  the  schools  may  allow  that  sympathy  ori- 
ginates some  of  our  actions;  I  say  it  governs  the  whole  world — 
the  whole  creation  !  Before  the  child  is  born,  it  is  this  secret 
affinity  which  can  mark  and  stamp  him  with  the  witness  of  his 
mother's  terror  or  his  mother's  desire." 

"Yet,"  said  Godolphin,  "  you  would  scarcely  in  your  zeal  for 
sympathy,  advocate  the  same  cause  as  Edricius  Mohynnus,  who 
cured  wounds  by  a  powder,  not  applied  to  the  wound,  but  to  the 
towel  that  had  been  dipped  in  its  blood?" 

"  No,"  answered  Volktman :  "  it  is  these  quacks  and  pretend- 
ers that  have  wronged  all  sciences,  by  clamoring  for  false  deduc- 
tions. But  I  do  believe  of  sympathy,  that  it  has  a  power  to 
transport  ourselves  out  of  the  body  and  reunite  us  with  the 
absent.  Hence,  trances  and  raptures,  in  which  the  patient,  being 
sincere,  will  tell  thee,  in  grave  earnestness,  and  with  minute 
detail,  of  all  that  he  saw,  and  heard,  and  encountered,  afar  off, 
in  other  parts  of  the  earth,  or  even  above  the  earth.  As  thou 
knowest  the  accredited  story  of  the  youth,  who,  being  transpor- 
ted with  a  vehement  and  longnursed  desire  to  see  his  mother, 
did,  through  that  same  desire,  become  as  it  were  rapt,  and 
beheld  her,  being  at  the  distance  of  many  miles,  and  giving  and 
exchanging  signs  of  their  real  and  bodily  conference." 

Godolphin  turned  aside  to  conceal  an  involuntary  smile  at  this 
grave  affirmation ;  but  the  mystic,  perhaps  perceiving  it,  con- 
tinued yet  more  eagerly  : 

"  Nay,  I  myself,  at  times,  have  experienced  such  trance,  if 
trance  it  be ;  and  have  conversed  with  them  who  have  passed 


GODOLPHTN.  131 

from  the  outward  earth — with  my  father  and  my  wife.  And,"  con- 
tinued he,  after  a  moment's  pause,  "  I  do  believe  that  we  may, 
by  means  of  this  power  of  attraction — this  elementary  and  all- 
penetrative  sympathy — pass  away,  in  our  last  moments,  at  once  into 
the  bosom  of  those  we  love.  For,  by  the  intent  and  rapt  longing 
to  behold  the  Blest  and  to  be  amongst  them,  we  may  be  drawn 
insensibly  into  their  presence,  and  the  hour  being  come  when  the 
affinity  between  the  spirit  and  the  body  shall  be  dissolved,  the 
mind  and  desire,  being  so  drawn  upward,  can  return  to  earth  no 
more.  And  this  sympathy,  refined  and  extended,  will  make,  I 
imagine,  our  powers,  our  very  being,  in  a  future  state.  Our  sym- 
pathy being  only,  then,  with  what  is  immortal,  we  shall  partake 
necessarily  of  that  nature  which  attracts  us ;  and  the  body  no 
longer  clogging  the  intenseness  of  our  desires,  we  shall  be  able  by 
a  wish  to  transport  ourselves  wheresoever  we  please — from  star  to 
star,  from  glory  to  glory,  charioted  and  winged  by  our  wishes." 

Godolphin  did  not  reply,  for  he  was  struck  with  the  growing 
paleness  of  the  mystic,  and  with  a  dreaming  and  intent  fixedness 
that  seemed  creeping  over  his  eyes,  which  were  usually  bright 
and  restless.  The  day  v^s  now  fast  declining.  Lucilla  entered 
the  room,  and  came  caressingly  to  her  father's  side. 

"  Is  the  evening  warm,  my  child  ?  "  said  the  astrologer. 

"  Very  mild  and  warm,"  answered  Lucilla. 

"  Give  me  your  arm,  then,"  said  he  ;  "I  will  sit  a  little  while 
without  the  threshold." 

The  Romans  live  in  flats,  as  at  Edinburgh,  and  with  a  common 
stair.  Volktman's  abode  was  in  the  secondo  piano.  He  de- 
scended the  stairs  with  a  step  lighter  than  it  had  been  of  late  ;  and 
sinking  into  a  seat  without  the  house,  seemed  silently  and  grate- 
fully to  inhale  the  soft  and  purple  air  of  an  Italian  sunset. 

By  and  by  the  sun  had  entirely  vanished  :  and  that  most  brief 
but  most  delicious  twilight,  common  to  the  clime,  had  succeeded. 
Veil-like  and  soft,  the  mist  that  floats  at  that  hour  between  earth 
and  heaven  lent  its  transparent  shadow  to  the  scene  around  them: 
it  seemed  to  tremble  as  for  a  moment,  and  then  was  gone.  The 
moon  arose,  and  cast  its  light  over  Volktman's  earnest  counten- 
ance ;  over  the  rich  bloom  and  watchful  eye  of  Lucilla ;  over  the 
contemplative  brow  and  motionless  figure  of  Godolphin.  It  was 
a  group  of  indefinable  interest :  the  Earth  was  so  still  that  the 
visionary  might  well  have  fancied  it  had  hushed  itself,  to  drink 
within  its  quiet  heart  the  voices  of  that  Heaven  in  whose  oracles 
he  believed.  Not  one  of  the  group  spoke  ;  the  astrologer's  mind 
and  gaze  were  riveted  above  and  neither  of  his  companions 
wished  to  break  the  meditations  of  the  old  and  dreaming  man. 


132  GODOLPHIN. 

Godolphin,  with  folded  arms  and  downcast  eyes,  was  pursuing 
his  own  thoughts ;  and  Lucilla,  to  whom  Godolphin's  presence 
was  a  subtle  and  subduing  intoxication,  looked  indeed  upward  to 
the  soft  and  tender  heavens,  but  with  the  soul  of  the  loving 
daughter  of  earth. 

Slowly,  nor  marked  by  his  companions,  the  gaze  of  the  mystic 
deepened  and  deepened  in  its  fixedness. 

The  minutes  went  on ;  and  the  evening  waned,  till  a  chill 
breeze,  floating  down  from  the  Latian  Hills,  recalled  Lucilla's 
attention  to  her  father.  She  covered  him  tenderly  with  her  own 
mantle,  and  whispered  gently  in  his  ear  her  admonition  to  shun 
the  coldness  of  the  coming  night.  He  did  not  answer  ;  and  on 
raising  her  voice  a  little  higher,  with  the  same  result,  she  looked 
appealingly  to  Godolphin.  He  laid  his  hand  on  Volktman's 
shoulder;  and,  bending  forward  to  address  him,  was  struck  dumb 
by  the  glazed  and  fixed  expression  of  the  mystic's  eyes.  The 
certainty  flashed  across  him  ;  he  hastily  felt  Volktman's  pulse — 
it  was  still.  There  was  no  doubt  left  on  his  mind  ;  and  yet  the 
daughter,  looking  at  him  all  the  while,  did  not  even  dream  of 
this  sudden  and  awful  stroke.  In  silence,  and  unconsciously,  the 
strange  and  solitary  spirit  of  the  mystic  had  passed  from  its  home 
— in  what  exact  instant  of  time,  or  by  what  last  contest  of  nature, 
was  not  known. 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 

A  SCENE. — LUCILLA'S  STRANGE  CONDUCT. — GODOLPHIN  PASSES 
THROUGH  A  SEVERE  ORDEAL. — EGERIA*S  GROTTO,  AND  WHAT 
THERE  HAPPENS. 

LET  us  pass  over  Godolphin's  most  painful  task.  What  Lucil- 
la's feelings  were,  the  reader  may  imagine  ;  and  yet,  her  wayward 
and  unanalyzed  temper  mocked  at  once  imagination  and  expres- 
sion to  depict  its  sufferings  or  its  joys. 

The  brother  of  Volktman's  wife  was  sent  for :  he  and  his  wife 
took  possession  of  the  abode  of  death.  This,  if  possible,  height- 
ened Lucilla's  anguish.  The  apathetic  and  vain  character  of  the 
middle  classes  in  Rome,  which  her  relations  shared,  slung  her 
heart  by  contrasting  its  own  desolate  abandonment  to  grief. 
Above  all,  she  was  revolted  by  the  unnatural  ceremonies  of  a 
Roman  funeral.  The  corpse  exposed,  the  cheeks  painted, 
the  parading  procession,  all  shocked  the  delicacy  of  her  real 
and  reckless  affliction.  But  when  this  was  over — when  the  rite  of 
death  was  done,  and  when,  in  the  house  wherein  her  sire  had  pre- 


GODOLPHIN.  133 

sided,  and  she  herself  had  been  left  to  a  liberty  wholly  unre- 
stricted, she  saw  strangers  (for  such  comparatively  her  relatives 
were  to  her)  settling  themselves  down,  with  vacant  countenances 
and  light  words,  to  the  common  occupations  of  life ;  when  she 
saw  them  move,  alter,  (nay,  talk  calmly  and  sometimes  with  jests,  of 
selling,)  those  little  household  articles  of  furniture  which,  homely 
and  worn  as  they  were,  were  hallowed  to  her  by  a  thousand  dear, 
and  infantine,  and  filial  recollections ;  when,  too,  she  found  her- 
self treated  as  a  child,  and,  in  some  measure,  as  a  dependent ; 
when  she  the  wild,  the  free,  saw  herself  subjected  to  restraint — • 
nay,  heard  the  commonest  actions  of  her  life  chidden  and 
reproved  ;  when  she  saw  the  trite  and  mean  natures  which  thus 
presumed  to  lord  it  over  her,  and  assume  empire  in  the  house  of 
one,  of  whose  wild  and  lofty,  though  erring  speculations,  of  whose 
generous  though  abstract  elements  of  character,  she  could  com- 
prehend enough  to  respect,  while  what  she  did  not  comprehend 
heightened  the  respect  into  awe — then,  the  more  vehement  and 
indignant  passions  of  her  mind  broke  forth  !  Her  flashing  eye, 
her  scornful  gesture,  her  mysterious  threat,  and  her  open  defiance 
astonished  always,  sometimes  amused,  but  more  often  terrified, 
the  apathetic  and  superstitious  Italians. 

Godolphin,  moved  by  interest  and  pity  for  the  daughter  of  his 
friend,  called  once  or  twice  after  the  funeral  at  the  house ;  and 
commended,  with  promises  and  gifts,  the  desolate  girl  to  the  ten- 
derness and  commiseration  of  her  relations.  There  is  nothing  an 
Italian  will  not  promise,  nothing  he  will  not  sell ;  and  Godolphin 
thus  purchased,  in  reality,  a  forbearance  to  Lucilla's  strange  tem- 
per (as  it  was  considered),  which  otherwise,  assuredly,  would  not 
have  been  displayed. 

More  than  a  month  had  elapsed  since  the  astrologer's  decease ; 
and,  the  season  of  the  malaria  verging  to  its  commencement, 
Godolphin  meditated  a  removal  to  Naples.  He  strolled,  two  days 
prior  to  his  departure,  to  the  house  on  the  Appia  Via,  in  order  to 
take  leave  of  Lucilla,  and  bequeath  to  her  relations  his  parting 
injunctions. 

It  was  a  strange  and  harsh  face  that  peered  forto  on  him 
through  the  iron  grating  of  the  door  before  he  obtained  admit- 
tance ;  and  when  he  entered,  he  heard  the  sound  of  voices  in  loud 
altercation.  Among  the  rest,  the  naturally  dulcet  and  silver  tones 
of  Lucilla  were  strained  beyond  their  wonted  key,  and  breathed 
the  accents  of  passion  and  disdain. 

He  entered  the  room  whence  the  sounds  of  dispute  proceeded  ; 
and  the  first  face  that  presented  itself  to  him  was  that  of  Lucilla. 
It  was  flushed  with  anger;  the  veins  in  the  smooth  forehead  were 


134  GODOLPHIN. 

swelled  ;  the  short  lip  breathed  beautiful  contempt.  She  stood  at 
some  little  distance  from  the  rest  of  the  inmates  of  the  room,  who 
were  seated ;  and  her  posture  was  erect  and  even  stately,  though 
in  wrath ;  her  arms  were  folded  upon  her  bosom,  and  the  com- 
posed excitement  of  her  figure  contrasted  with  the  play,  and  fire, 
and  energy  of  her  features. 

At  Godolphin's  appearance,  a  sudden  silence  fell  upon  the  con- 
clave ;  the  uncle  and  the  aunt  (the  latter  of  whom  had  seemed 
the  noisest)  subsided  into  apologetic  respect  to  the  rich  (he  was 
rich  to  them)  young  Englishman  ;  and  Lucilla  sank  into  a  seat, 
covered  her  face  with  her  small  and  beautiful  hands,  and — hum- 
bled from  her  anger  and  her  vehemence — burst  into  tears. 

"  And  what  is  this?  "  said  Godolphin,  pityingly. 

The  Italians  hastened  to  inform  him.  Lucilla  had  chosen  to 
absent  herself  from  home  every  evening ;  she  had  been  seen,  the 
last  night,  on  the  Corso,  crowded  as  that  street  was  with  the 
young,  the  profligate,  and  the  idle.  They  could  not  but  reprove 
"  the  dear  girl  "  for  this  indiscretion,  (Italians,  indifferent  as  to 
die  conduct  of  the  married,  are  generally  attentive  to  that  of  their 
single,  women) ;  and  she  announced  her  resolution  to  persevere  in 
it. 

"Is  this  true,  my  pupil?  "  said  Godolphin,  turning  to  Lucilla: 
the  poor  girl  sobbed  on,  but  returned  no  answer. 

"  Leave  me  to  reprimand  and  admonish  her,"  said  he  to  the 
aunt  and  uncle  ;  and  they,  without  appearing  to  notice  the  incon- 
gruity of  reprimand  in  the  mouth  of  a  man  of  seven-and-twenty 
to  a  girl  of  fifteen,  chattered  forth  a  Babel  of  conciliation,  and 
left  the  apartment. 

Godolphin,  young  as  he  might  be,  was  not  unfitted  for  his  task. 
There  was  a  great  deal  of  quiet  dignity  mingled  with  the  kind- 
ness of  his  manner ;  and  his  affection  for  Lucilla  had  hitherto 
been  so  pure,  that  he  felt  no  embarrassment  in  addressing  her  as 
a  brother.  He  approached  the  corner  of  the  room  in  which  she 
sat ;  he  drew  a  chair  near  to  her ;  and  took  her  reluctant  and 
trembling  hand  with  a  gentleness  that  made  her  weep  with  a  yet 
wilder  vehemence. 

"My  dear  Lucilla,"  said  he,  "you  know  your  father  honored 
me  with  his  regard :  let  me  presume  on  that  regard,  and  on  my 
long  acquaintance  with  yourself,  to  address  you  as  your  friend — 
as  your  brother  !  "  Lucilla  drew  away  her  hand ;  but  again,  as  if 
ashamed  of  the  impulse,  extended  it  towards  him. 

"  You  cannot  know  the  world  as  I  do,  dear  Lucilla,"  continued 
Godolphin  ;  "  for  experience  in  its  affairs  is  bought  at  some  little 
expense,  which  I  pray  that  it  may  never  cost  you.  In  all  coun- 


GODOLPHIN.  135 

tries,  Lucilla,  an  unmarried  female  is  exposed  to  dangers  which, 
without  any  actual  fault  of  her  own,  may  embitter  her  future  life. 
One  of  the  greatest  of  these  dangers  lies  in  deviating  from  custom. 
With  the  woman  who  does  this,  every  man  thinks  himself  entitled 
to  give  his  thoughts — his  words — nay,  even  his  actions,  a  license 
which  you  cannot  but  dread  to  incur.  Your  uncle  and  aunt, 
therefore,  do  right  to  advise  your  not  going  alone,  to  the  public 
streets  of  Rome  more  especially,  except  in  the  broad  daylight ; 
and  though  their  advice  be  irksomely  intruded,  and  ungracefully 
couched,  it  is  good  in  its  principle,  and — yes,  dearest  Lucilla, 
even  necessary  for  you  to  follow." 

"But,"  said  Lucilla,  through  her  tears,  "you  cannot  guess 
what  insults,  what  unkindness,  I  have  been  forced  to  submit  to 
from  them.  I,  who  never  knew,  till  now,  what  insult  and  un- 
kindness were!  I,  who — "  here  sobs  checked  her  utterance. 

"  But  how,  my  young  and  fair  friend,  how  can  you  mend  their 
manners  by  destroying  their  esteem  for  you  ?  Respect  yourself, 
Lucilla,,  if  you  wish  others  to  respect  you.  But,  perhaps," — and 
such  a  thought  for  the  first  time  flashed  across  Godolphin — 
"  perhaps  you  did  not  seek  the  Corso  for  the  crowd,  but  for  one  : 
perhaps  you  went  there  to  meet — dare  I  guess  the  fact  ? — an  ad- 
mirer, a  lover." 

"  Now  you  insult  me  !  "  cried  Lucilla,  angrily. 

"I  thank  you  for  your  anger ;  I  accept  it  as  a  contradic- 
tion," said  Godolphin.  "But  listen  yet  awhile,  and  forgive 
frankness.  If  there  be  any  one,  among  the  throng  of  Italian 
youths,  whom  you  have  seen,  and  could  be  happy  with  ;  one  who 
loves  you,  and  whom  you  do  not  hate  ;  remember  that  I  am  your 
father's  friend ;  that  I  am  rich  ;  that  I  can — " 

"Cruel,  cruel !  "  interrupted  Lucilla;  and  withdrawing  her- 
self from  Godolphin,  she  walked  to  and  fro  with  great  and  strug- 
gling agitation. 

"It  is  not  so,  then  ?  "  said  Godolphin,  doubtingly. 

' '  No,  sir  ;    no  !  " 

"  Lucilla  Volktman,"  said  Godolphin,  with  a  colder  gravity 
than  he  had  yet  called  forth,  "  I  claim  some  attention  from  you  ; 
some  confidence  ;  nay,  some  esteem — for  the  sake  of  your  father ; 
for  the  sake  of  your  early  years,  when  I  assisted  to  teach  you  my 
native  tongue,  and  loved  you  as  a  brother.  Promise  me  that  you 
will  not  commit  this  indiscretion  any  more — at  least  till  we  meet 
again  ;  nay,  that  you  will  not  stir  abroad,  save  with  one  of  your 
relations. ' ' 

"Impossible  !     Impossible  !  "  cried  Lucilla,  vehemently;   "it 


136  GODOLPHIN. 

were  to  take  away  the  only  solace  I  have ;  it  were  to  make  life  a 
privation — a  curse. ' ' 

' '  Not  so,  Lucilla ;  it  is  to  make  life  respectable  and  safe.  I, 
on  the  other  hand,  will  engage  that  all  within  these  walls  shall 
behave  to  you  with  indulgence  and  kindness." 

' '  I  care  not  for  their  kindness  !  For  the  kindness  of  any  one, 
save — " 

"Whom?"  asked  Godolphin,  perceiving  she  would  not  pro- 
ceed :  but  as  she  was  still  silent,  he  did  not  press  the  question. 
1  'Come!  "said  he,  persuasively:  "come,  promise,  and  be 
friends  with  me  ;  do  not  let  us  part  angrily  :  I  am  about  to  take 
my  leave  of  you  for  many  months." 

"  Part !    You  !— months  !  O  God,  do  not  say  so  !  " 

With  these  words,  she  was  by  his  side ;  and  gazing  on  him 
with  her  large  and  pleading  eyes,  wherein  was  stamped  a  wild- 
ness,  a  terror,  the  cause  of  which  he  did  not  as  yet  decipher. 

"  No,  no,"  said  she,  with  a  faint  smile  :  "  no  !  you  meant  to 
frighten  me,  to  extort  my  promise.  You  are  not  going  to  desert 
me!" 

"  But,  Lucilla,  I  will  not  leave  you  to  unkindness  ;  they  shall 
not — they  dare  not  wound  you  again." 

' '  Say  to  me  that  you  are  not  going  from  Rome :  speak ; 
quick!" 

"I  go  in  two  days." 

"  Then  let  me  die  !  "  said  Lucilla,  in  atone  of  such  deep  des- 
pair, that  it  chilled  and  appalled  Godolphin  ;  who  did  not,  how- 
ever, attribute  her  grief  (the  grief  of  this  mere  child — a  child  so 
wayward  and  eccentric)  to  any  other  cause  than  that  feeling  of 
abandonment  which  the  young  so  bitterly  experience  at  being  left 
utterly  alone  with  persons  unfamiliar  to  their  habits,  and  opposed 
to  their  liking. 

He  sought  to  sooth  her,  but  she  repelled  him.  Her  features 
worked  convulsively :  she  walked  twice  across  the  room ;  then 
stopped  opposite  to  him,  and  a  certain  strained  composure  on 
her  brow  seemed  to  denote  that  she  had  arrived  at  some  sudden 
resolution. 

"  Wouldst  thou  ask  me,"  she  said,  "  what  cause  took  me  into 
the  streets  as  the  shadows  darkened,  and  enabled  me  lightly  to 
bear  threats  at  home  and  risk  abroad  ?  " 

"  Ay,  Lucilla :   wilt  thou  tell  me  ?  " 

"  THOU  was  the  cause  !  "  she  said,  in  a  low  voice,  trembling 
with  emotion,  and  the  next  moment  sunk  on  her  knees  before 
him. 

With  a  confusion  that  ill  became  so  practiced  and  favored  a 


GODOLPHIN.  137 

gallant,  Godolphin  sought  to  raise  her.  "  No  !  no  !  "  she  said  ; 
"  you  will  despise  me  now  :  let  me  lie  here,  and  die  thinking  of 
thee.  Yes!  "  she  continued,  with  an  inward  but  rapid  voice,  as 
he  lifted  her  reructant  frame  from  the  earth,  and  hung  over  her 
with  a  cold  and  uncaressing  attention ;  "  Yes  !  you  I  loved — I 
adored  from  my  very  childhood.  When  you  were  by,  life  seemed 
changed  to  me  ;  when  absent,  I  longed  for  night,  that  I  might 
dream  of  you.  The  spot  you  had  touched  I  marked  out  in  silence, 
that  I  might  kiss  it  and  address  it  when  you  were  gone.  You  left 
us ;  four  years  passed  away :  and  the  recollection  of  you  made  and 
shaped  my  very  nature.  I  loved  solitude;  for  in  solitude  I 
saw  you — in  imagination  I  spoke  to  you — and  methought  you 
answered  and  did  not  chide.  You  returned — and — and — but  no 
matter :  to  see  you,  at  the  hour  you  usually  leave  home ;  to 
see  you,  I  wandered  forth  with  the  evening.  I  tracked  you, 
myself  unseen ;  I  followed  you  at  a  distance ;  I  marked  you 
disappear  within  some  of  the  proud  palaces  that  never  know 
what  love  is.  I  returned  home  weeping,  but  happy.  And 
do  you  think — do  you  dare  to  think — that  I  should  have  told  you 
this,  had  you  not  driven  me  mad  !  Had  you  not  left  me  reckless 
of  what  henceforth  was  thought  of  me — became  of  me !  What 
will  life  be  to  me  when  you  are  gone  ?  And  now  I  have  said  all ! 
Go  !  You  do  not  love  me  :  I  know  it :  but  do  not  say  so.  Go 
— leave  me ;  why  do  you  not  leave  me  ?  " 

Does  there  live  one  man  who  can  hear  a  woman,  young  and 
beautiful,  confess  attachment  to  him,  and  not  catch  the  conta- 
gion ?  Affected,  flattered,  and  almost  melted  into  love  himself. 
Godolphin  felt  all  the  danger  of  the  moment :  but  this  young,  in- 
experienced girl — the  daughter  of  his  friend — no !  her  he  could 
not,  loving, willing  as  she  was,  betray. 

Yet  it  was  some  moments  before  he  could  command  himself 
sufficiently  to  answer  her;  "  Listen  to  me  calmly,"  at  length  he 
said ;  "we  are  at  least  to  each  other  dear  friends  :  nay,  listen,  I 
beseech  you.  I,  Lucilla,  am  a  man  whose  heart  is  forestalled — 
exhausted  before  its  time ;  I  have  loved,  deeply,  and  passionately  : 
that  love  is  over,  but  it  has  unfitted  me  for  any  species  of  love  re- 
sembling itself — any  which  I  could  offer  to  you.  Dearest  Lucilla, 
1  will  not  disguise  the  truth  from  you.  Were  I  to  love  you,  it 
would  be — not  in  the  eyes  of  your  countrymen,  (with  whom  such 
connections  are  common),  but  in  the  eyes  of  mine — it  would  be 
dishonor.  Shall  I  confer  even  this  partial  dishonor  on  you?  No  ! 
Lucilla,  this  feeling  of  yours  towards  me  is  (  pardon  me  )  but  a 
young  and  childish  phantasy :  you  will  smile  at  it  some  years 
hence.  I  am  not  worthy  of  so  pure  and  fresh  a  heart ;  but  at 


138  GODOLPHIN. 

least  "  (  here  he  spoke  in  a  lower  voice,  and  as  to  himself),  '•"  at 
least  I  am  not  so  unworthy  as  to  wrong  it." 

"Go!"  said  Lucilla;  "go,  I  implore  you."  She  spoke,  and 
stood  hueless  and  motionless,  as  if  the  life  (life's  life  was  indeed 
gone !)  had  departed  from  her.  Her  features  were  set  and  rigid  ; 
the  tears  that  stole  in  large  drops  down  her  cheeks  were  unfelt;  a 
slight  quivering  of  her  lips,  only,  bespoke  what  passed  within 
her. 

"  Ah  !"  cried  Godolphin,  stung  from  his  usual  calm;  stung 
from  the  quiet  kindness  he  had  sought,  from  principle,  to  assume  ; 
"  Can  I  withstand  this  trial?  I,  whose  dream  of  life  has  been 
the  love  that  I  might  now  find  !  I,  who  have  never  before  known 
an  obstacle  to  a  wish  which  I  have  not  contended  against,  if  not 
conquered  ;  and,  weakened  as  I  am  with  the  habitual  indulgence 
to  temptation,  which  has  never  been  so  strong  as  now ;  but  no  !  I 
will — I  will  deserve  this  attachment  by  self-restraint,  self-sacri- 
fice." 

He  moved  away;  and  then  returning,  dropped  on  his  knee 
before  Lucilla. 

"  Spare  me  !  "  said  he,  in  an  agitated  voice,  which  brought 
back  all  the  blood  to  that  young  and  transparent  cheek,  which 
was  now  half  averted  from  him  ;  ' '  spare  me — spare  yourself  ! 
Look  around,  when  I  am  gone,  for  some  one  to  replace  my  image : 
thousands  younger,  fairer,  warmer  of  heart,  will  aspire  to  your 
love ;  that  love  for  them  will  be  exposed  to  no  peril — no  shame : 
forget  me  ;  select  another ;  be  happy  and  respected.  Permit  me 
alone  to  fill  the  place  of  your  friend — your  brother.  I  will  pro- 
vide for  your  comforts,  your  liberty:  you  shall  be  restrained, 
offended  no  more.  God  bless  you,  dear,  dear  Lucilla ;  and 
believe,"  (he  said  almost  in  a  whisper),  "that,  in  thus  flying 
you,  I  have  acted  generously,  and  with  an  effort  worthy  of  your 
loveliness  and  your  love." 

He  said,  and  hurried  from  the  apartment.  Lucilla  turned 
slowly  round  as  the  door  closed,  and  then  fell  motionless  on  the 
ground. 

Meanwhile  Godolphin,  mastering  his  emotion,  sought  the  host 
and  hostess ;  and  begging  them  to  visit  his  lodging  that  evening, 
to  receive  certain  directions  and  rewards,  hastily  left  the  house. 

But  instead  of  returning  home,  the  desire  for  a  brief  solitude 
and  self-commune,  which  usually  follows  strong  excitement  (and 
which,  in  all  less  ordinary  events,  suggested  his  sole  counsellors 
or  monitors  to  the  musing  Godolphin),  led  his  steps  in  an  oppo- 
site direction.  Scarcely  conscious  whither  he  was  wandering,  he 


GODOLPH1N.  139 

did  not  pause  till  he  found  himself  in  that  green  and  still  valley 
in  which  the  pilgrim  beholds  the  grotto  of  Egeria. 

It  was  noon,  and  the  day  warm,  but  not  overpowering.  The 
leaf  slept  on  the  old  trees  that  are  scattered  about  that  little 
valley ;  and  amidst  the  soft  and  rich  turf  the  wanderer's  step  dis- 
turbed the  lizard,  basking  its  brilliant  hues  in  the  noontide,  and 
glancing  rapidly  through  the  herbage  as  it  retreated.  And  from 
the  trees,  and  through  the  air,  the  occasional  song  of  the  birds 
(for  in  Italy  their  voices  are  rare)  floated  with  a  peculiar  clear- 
ness, and  even  noisiness  of  music,  along  the  deserted  haunts  of 
the  Nymph. 

The  scene,  rife  with  its  beautiful  associations,  recalled  Godol- 
phin  from  his  revery.  "And  here,"  thought  he,  "Fable  has 
thrown  its  most  lovely  and  enduring  enchantment :  here,  every 
one  who  has  tasted  the  loves  of  earth,  and  sickened  for  the  love 
that  is  ideal,  finds  a  spell  more  attractive  to  his  steps,  more  fraught 
with  contemplation  to  his  spirit,  than  aught  raised  by  the  palace 
of  the  Caesars  or  the  tomb  of  the  Scipios. ' ' 

Thus  meditating,  and  softened  by  the  late  scene  with  Lucilla 
(to  which  his  thoughts  again  recurred),  he  sauntered  onward  to 
the  steep  side  of  the  bank,  in  which  faith  and  tradition  have 
hollowed  out  the  grotto  of  the  goddess.  He  entered  the  silent 
cavern,  and  bathed  his  temples  in  the  delicious  waters  of  the 
fountain. 

It  was  perhaps  well  that  it  was  not  at  that  moment  Lucilla  made 
to  him  her  strange  and  unlooked-for  confession  :  again  and  again 
he  said  to  himself  (as  if  seeking  for  a  justification  of  his  self- 
sacrifice)  :  "Her  father  was  not  Italian,  and  possessed  feeling 
and  honor:  let  me  not  forget  that  he  loved  me!  "  In  truth,  the 
avowal  of  this  wild  girl ;  an  avowal  made  indeed  with  the  ardor 
— but  also  breathing  of  the  innocence,  the  inexperience — of  her 
character ;  had  opened  to  his  fancy  new  and  not  undelicious  pro- 
spects. He  had  never  loved  her,  save  with  a  lukewarm  kindness, 
before  that  last  hour ;  but  now,  in  recalling  her  beauty,  her  tears, 
her  passionate  abandonment,  can  we  wonder  that  he  felt  a  strange 
beating  at  his  heart,  and  that  he  indulged  that  dissolved  and  lux- 
urious vein  of  tender  meditation  which  is  the  prelude  to  all  love  ! 
We  must  recall,  too,  the  recollection  of  his  own  temper,  so  con- 
stantly yearning  for  the  unhackneyed,  the  untasted ;  and  his  deep 
and  soft  order  of  imagination,  by  which  he  involuntarily  con- 
jured up  the  delight  of  living  with  one,  watching  one,  so  differ- 
ent from  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  whose  thoughts  and  passions 
(wild  as  they  might  be)  were  all  devoted  to  him  ! 

And  in  what  spot  were  these  imaginings  fed  and  colored  ?    In 


140  GODOLPHIN. 

a  spot  which,  in  the  nature  of  its  divine-fascination,  could  be 
found  only  beneath  one  sky — that  sky  the  most  balmy  and  loving 
upon  earth !  Who  could  think  of  love  within  the  haunt  and 
temple  of 

That  Nympholepsy  ol  some  fond  despair, 

and  not  feel  that  love  enhanced,  deepened,  modulated,  into  at 
once  a  dream  and  a  desire  ? 

It  was  long  that  Godolphin  indulged  himself  in  recalling  the 
image  of  Lucilla ;  but  nerved  at  length,  and  gradually,  by  harder, 
and  we  may  hope  better,  sentiments  than  those  of  a  love  which 
he  could  scarcely  indulge  without  criminality  on  the  one  hand, 
or,  what  must  have  appeared  to  the  man  of  the  world,  derogatory 
folly  on  the  other ;  he  turned  his  thoughts  into  a  less  voluptuous 
channel,  and  prepared,  though  with  a  reluctant  step,  to  depart 
homewards.  But  what  was  his  amaze,  his  confusion,  when,  on 
reaching  the  mouth  of  the  cave,  he  saw  within  a  few  steps  of 
him  Lucilla  herself ! 

She  was  walking  alone  and  slowly,  her  eyes  bent  upon  the 
ground,  and  did  not  perceive  him.  According  to  a  common  cus- 
tom with  the  middle  classes  of  Rome,  her  rich  hair,  save  by  a 
single  band,  was  uncovered ;  and  as  her  slight  and  exquisite  form 
moved  along  the  velvet  sod,  so  beautiful  a  shape,  and  a  face  so 
rare  in  its  character,  and  delicate  in  its  expression,  were  in  har- 
mony with  the  sweet  superstition  of  the  spot,  and  seemed  almost 
to  restore  to  the  deserted  cave  and  the  mourning  stream  their  liv- 
ing Egeria. 

Godolphin  stood  transfixed  to  the  earth  ;  and  Lucilla,  who  was 
walking  in  the  direction  of  the  grotto,  did  not  perceive,  till  she 
was  almost  immediately  before  him.  She  gave  a  faint  scream  as 
she  lifted  her  eyes  ;  and  the  first  and  most  natural  sentiment  of 
the  woman  breaking  forth  involuntarily,  she  attempted  to  falter 
out  her  disavowal  of  all  expectation  of  meeting  him  there : 

"Indeed,  indeed,  I  did  not  know — that  is — I — I — "  she  could 
achieve  no  more. 

"Is  this  a  favorite  spot  with  you?"  said  he,  with  the  vague 
embarrassment  of  one  at  a  loss  for  words. 

"Yes,"  said  Lucilla,  faintly. 

And  so,  in  truth,  it  was :  for  its  vicinity  to  her  home,  the 
beauty  of  the  little  valley,  and  the  interest  attached  to  it — an  inter- 
est not  the  less  to  her  in  that  she  was  but  imperfectly  acquainted 
with  the  true  legend  of  the  Nymph  and  her  royal  lover — had  made 
it,  even  from  her  childhood,  a  chosen  and  beloved  retreat,  espe- 
cially in  that  dangerous  summer  time,  which  drives  the  visitor 


GODOLPHIN.  141 

from  the  spot,  and  leaves  the  scene,  in  great  measure,  to  the  soli- 
tude which  befits  it.  Associated  as  the  place  was  with  the  recol- 
lections of  her  earlier  griefs,  it  was  thither  that  her  first  instinct 
made  her  fly  from  the  rude  contact  and  displeasing  companion- 
ship of  her  relations,  to  give  vent  to  the  various  and  conflicting 
passions  which  the  late  scene  with  Godolphin  had  called  forth. 

They  now  stood  for  a  few  moments  silent  and  embarrassed,  till 
Godolphin,  resolved  to  end  a  scene  which  he  began  to  feel  was 
dangerous,  said  in  a  hurried  tone : 

"  Farewell,  my  sweet  pupil ! — farewell  !  May  God  bless  you  !  " 

He  extended  his  hand.  Lucilla  seized  it,  as  if  by  impulse  ; 
and  conveying  it  suddenly  to  her  lips,  bathed  it  with  tears. 

<(  I  feel,"  said  this  wild  and  unregulated  girl,  "I  feel,  from 
your  manner,  that  I  ought  to  be  grateful  to  you ;  yet  I  scarcely 
know  why  :  you  confess  you  cannot  love  me  ;  that  my  affection 
distresses  you — you  fly — you  desert  me.  Ah,  if  you  felt  one  par- 
ticle even  of  friendship  for  me,  could  you  do  so?  " 

"  Lucilla,  what  can  I  say?     I  cannot  marry  you." 

"  Do  I  wish  it  ?  I  ask  thee  but  to  let  me  go  with  thee  wherever 
thou  goest." 

"Poor  child!"  said  Godolphin,  gazing  on  her;  "art  thou 
not  aware  that  thou  askest  thine  own  dishonor?" 

Lucilla  seemed  surprised:  "  Is  it  dishonor  to  love?  They  do 
not  think  so  in  Italy.  It  is  wrong  for  a  maiden  to  confess  it ;  but 
that  thou  hast  forgiven  me.  And  if  to  follow  thee — to  sit  with 
thee — to  be  near  thee — bring  aught  of  evil  to  myself,  not  thee, — 
let  me  incur  the  evil :  it  can  be  nothing  compared  to  the  agony 
of  thy  absence  !  ' ' 

She  looked  up  timidly  as  she  spoke,  and  saw,  with  a  sort  of  ter- 
ror, that  his  face  worked  with  emotions  which  seemed  to  choke 
his  answer.  "  If,"  she  cried  passionately,  "  if  I  have  said  what 
pains  thee ;  if  I  have  asked  what  would  give  dishonor,  as  thou 
callest  it,  or  harm,  to  thyself,  forgive  me — I  knew  it  not — and 
leave  me.  But  if  it  were  not  of  thyself  that  thou  didst  speak, 
believe  that  thou  hast  done  me  but  a  cruel  mercy.  Let  me  go 
with  thee,  I  implore  !  I  have  no  friend  here :  no  one  loves  me. 
I  hate  the  faces  I  gaze  upon;  I  loathe  the  voices  I  hear.  And, 
were  it  for  nothing  else,  thou  reraindest  me  of  him  who  is  gone  ; 
thou  art  familiar  to  me — every  look  of  thee  breathes  of  my  home, 
of  my  household  recollections.  Take  me  with  thee,  beloved 
stranger!  or  leave  me  to  die — I  will  not  survive  thy  loss  !  " 

"You  speak  of  your  father.  Know  you  that,  were  I  to  grant 
what  you,  in  your  childish  innocence,  so  unthinkingly  request,  hs 
might  curse  me  from  his  grave?  " 


142  GODOLPHIN. 

"O  God,  not  so!  Mine  is  the  prayer,  be  mine  the  guilt,  if 
guilt  there  be.  But  is  it  not  unkinder  in  thee  to  desert  his  daughter 
than  to  protect  her?  " 

There  was  a  great,  a  terrible  struggle  in  Godolphin's  breast. 

"What,"  said  he,  scarcely  knowing  what  he  said;  "What 
will  the  world  think  of  you  if  you  fly  with  a  stranger?  " 

"  There  is  no  world  to  me  but  thee  !  " 

"What  will  your  uncle — your  relations  say? " 

"  I  care  not ;  for  I  shall  not  hear  them.' ' 

"No,  no;  this  must  not  be  !  "  said  Godolphin,  proudly,  and 
once  more  conquering  himself.  "  Lucilla,  I  would  give  up  every 
other  dream  or  hope  in  life  to  feel  that  I  might  requite  this  devo- 
tion by  passing  my  life  with  thee :  to  feel  that  I  might  grant  what 
thou  askest  without  wronging  thy  innocence  ;  but — but — " 

"You  love  me,  then  !  You  love  me  !  "  cried  Lucilla,  joyously, 
and  alive  to  no  other  interpretation  of  his  words. 

Godolphin  was  transported  beyond  himself;  and  clasping 
Lucilla  in  his  arms,  he  covered  her  cheeks,  her  lips,  with  impas- 
sioned and  burning  kisses ;  then  suddenly,  as  if  stung  by  some 
irresistible  impulse,  he  tore  himself  away,  and  fled  from  the  spot. 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 

THE    WEAKNESS    OF     ALL     VIRTUE    SPRINGING     ONLY     FROM     THE 

FEELINGS. 

IT  was  the  evening  before  Godolphin  left  Rome.  As  he  was 
entering  his  palazzo  he  descried,  in  the  darkness,  and  at  a  little 
distance,  a  figure  wrapped  in  a  mantle,  that  reminded  him  of 
Lucilla;  ere  he  could  certify  himself,  it  was  gone. 

On  entering  his  rooms,  he  looked  eagerly  over  the  papers  and 
notes  on  his  table ;  he  seemed  disappointed  with  the  result,  and 
sat  himself  down  in  moody  and  discontented  thought.  He  had 
written  to  Lucilla  the  day  before,  a  long,  a  kind,  nay,  a  noble 
outpouring  of  his  thoughts  and  feelings.  As  far  as  he  was  able, 
to  one  so  simple  in  her  experience,  yet  so  wild  in  her  fancy,  he 
explained  to  her  the  nature  of  his  struggles  and  his  self-sacrifice. 
He  did  not  disguise  from  her  that,  till  the  moment  of  her  confes- 
sion, he  had  never  examined  the  state  of  his  heart  towards  her  ; 
nor  that,  with  that  confession,  a  new  and  ardent  train  of  senti- 
ment had  been  kindled  within  him.  He  knew  enough  of  women 
to  be  aware,  that  the  last  avowal  would  be  the  sweetest  consola- 
tion both  to  her  vanity  and  her  heart.  He  assured  her  of  all  the 
promises  he  had  received  from  her  relations  to  grant  her  the  liberty 


GODOLPHIN.  143 

and  the  indulgence  that  her  early  and  unrestrained  habits 
required ;  and,  in  the  most  delicate  and  respectful  terms,  he 
enclosed  an  order  for  a  sum  of  money  sufficient  at  any  time  to 
command  the  regard  of  those  with  whom  she  lived,  or  to  enable 
her  to  choose,  should  she  so  desire  (though  he  advised  her  not  to 
adopt  such  a  measure,  save  for  the  most  urgent  reasons, )  another 
residence.  "Send  me  in  return,"  he  said,  as  he  concluded,  "  a 
lock  of  your  hair.  I  want  nothing  to  remind  me  of  your  beauty ; 
but  I  want  some  token  of  the  heart  of  whose  affection  I  am  so 
mournfully  proud.  I  will  wear  it  as  a  charm  against  the  contam- 
ination of  that  world  of  which  you  are  so  happily  ignorant ;  as  a 
memento  of  one  nature  beyond  the  thought  of  self;  as  a  surety 
that,  in  finding  within  this  base  and  selfish  quarter  of  earth,  one 
soul  so  warm,  so  pure,  as  yours,  I  did  not  deceive  myself,  and 
dream.  If  we  ever  meet  again,  may  you  have  then  found  some 
one  happier  than  I  am,  and  in  his  tenderness  have  forgotten  all 
of  me  save  one  kind  remembrance.  Beautiful  and  dear  Lucilla, 
adieu  !  If  I  have  not  given  way  to  the  luxury  of  being  beloved 
by  you,  it  is  because  your  generous  self- abandonment  has  awaken- 
ed, within  a  heart  too  selfish  to  others,  a  real  love  for  yourself." 
To  this  letter  Godolphin  had,  hour  after  hour,  expected  a 
reply.  He  received  none — not  even  the  lock  of  hair  for  which 
he  had  pressed.  He  was  disappointed  ;  angry  with  Lucilla,  dis- 
satisfied with  himself.  "  How  bitterly,"  thought  he,  "  the  wise 
Saville  would  smile  at  my  folly  !  I  have  renounced  the  bliss  of 
possessing  this  singular  and  beautiful  being ;  for  what  ?  A 
scruple  which  she  cannot  even  comprehend,  and  at  which,  in  her 
friendless  and  forlorn  state,  the  most  starch  of  her  dissolute 
country-women  would  smile  as  a  ridiculous  punctilio.  And,  in 
truth,  had  I  fled  hence  with  her,  should  I  not  have  made  her 
throughout  life  happier — far  happier,  than  she  will  be  now?  Nor 
would  she,  in  that  happiness,  have  felt,  like  an  English  girl,  any 
pang  of  shame.  Here,  the  tie  would  have  never  been  regarded 
as  a  degradation  ;  nor  does  she,  recurring  to  the  simple  laws  of 
nature,  imagine  that  any  one  could  so  regard  it.  Besides,  inex- 
perienced as  she  is — the  creature  of  impulse — will  she  not  fall  a 
victim  to  some  more  artful  and  less  generous  lover  ?  To  some  one 
who  in  her  innocence  will  see  only  forwardness ;  and  who,  far  from 
protecting  her  as  I  should  have  done,  will  regard  her  but  as  the 
plaything  of  an  hour,  and  cast  her  forth  the  moment  his  passion 
is  sated  ?  Sated  !  O  bitter  thought,  that  the  head  of  another 
should  rest  upon  that  bosom  now  so  wholly  mine !  After  all,  I 
have,  in  vainly  adopting  a  seeming  and  sounding  virtue,  merely 
renounced  my  own  happiness  to  leave  her  to  the  chances  of  being 


144  GODOLPH1N. 

permanently  rendered  unhappy,  and  abandoned  to  want, 
destitution,  by  another  !  " 

These  disagreeable  and  regretful  thoughts  were,  in  turn,  but 
weakly  combated  by  the  occasional  self-congratulation  that 
belongs  to  a  just  or  generous  act,  and  were  varied  by  a  thousand 
conjectures — now  of  anxiety,  now  of  anger — as  to  the  silence  of 
Lucilla.  Sometimes  he  thought — but  the  thought  only  glanced 
partially  across  him,  and  was  not  distinctly  acknowledged — that 
she  might  seek  an  interview  with  him  ere  he  departed  ;  and  in 
this  hope  he  did  not  retire  to  rest  till  the  dawn  broke  over  the 
ruins  of  the  mighty  and  breathless  city.  He  then  flung  himself 
on  a  sofa  without  undressing,  but  could  not  sleep,  save  in  short 
and  broken  intervals. 

The  next  day  he  put  off  his  departure  till  noon,  still  in  the 
hope  of  hearing  from  Lucilla,  but  in  vain.  He  could  not  flatter 
himself  with  the  hope  that  Lucilla  did  not  know  the  exact  time 
for  his  journey — he  had  expressly  stated  it.  Sometimes  he  con- 
ceived the  notion  of  seeking  her  again ;  but  he  knew  too  well  the 
weakness  of  his  generous  resolution;  and,  though  infirm  of 
thought,  was  yet  virtuous  enough  in  act  not  to  hazard  it  to  certain 
defeat.  At  length,  in  a  momentary  desperation,  and  muttering 
reproaches  on  Lucilla  for  her  fickleness  and  inability  to  appreci- 
ate the  magnanimity  of  his  conduct,  he  threw  himself  into  his 
carriage,  and  bade  adieu  to  Rome. 

As  every  grove  that  the  traveller  passes  on  that  road  was 
guarded  once  by  a  nymph,  so  now  it  is  hallowed  by  a  memory. 
In  vain  the  air,  heavy  with  death,  creeps  over  the  wood,  the  rivu- 
let, and  the  shattered  tower ;  the  mind  will  not  recur  to  the  risk 
of  its  ignoble  tenement ;  it  flies  back ;  it  is  with  the  Past !  A 
subtle  and  speechless  rapture  fills  and  exalts  the  spirit.  There, 
far  to  the  West,  spreads  that  purple  sea,  haunted  by  a  million 
reminiscences  of  glory ;  there  the  mountains,  with  their  sharp 
and  snowy  crests,  rise  into  the  bosom  of  the  heavens ;  on  that 
plain,  the  pilgrim  yet  hails  the  traditional  tomb  of  the  Curiatii 
and  those  immortal  Twins  who  left  to  their  brother  the  glory  of 
conquest,  and  the  shame  by  which  it  was  succeeded ;  around  the 
Lake  of  Nemi  yet  bloom  the  sacred  groves  by  which  Diana  raised 
Hippolytus  again  into  life.  Poetry,  Fable,  History,  watch  over 
the  land:  it  is  a  sepulchre;  Death  is  within  and  around  it; 
Decay  writes  defeature  upon  every  stone ;  but  the  Past  sits  by  the 
tomb  as  a  mourning  angel ;  a  soul  breathes  through  the  desola- 
tion ;  a  voice  calls  amidst  the  silence.  Every  age  that  hath 
passed  away  hath  left  a  ghost  behind  it ;  and  the  beautiful  land 
seems  like  that  imagired  clime  beneath  the  earth  in  which  man, 


GODOLPHIN.  145 

glorious   though   it   be,  may  not  breathe  and  live,  but  which  is 
populous  with  holy  phantoms  and  illustrious  shades. 

On,  on  sped  Godolphin.  Night  broke  over  him  as  he  traversed 
the  Pontine  Marshes.  There,  the  malaria  broods  over  its  rankest 
venom ;  solitude  hath  lost  the  soul  that  belonged  to  it ;  all  life, 
save  the  deadly  fertility  of  corruption,  seems  to  have  rotted  away ; 
the  spirit  falls  stricken  into  gloom  ;  a  nightmare  weighs  upon  the 
breast  of  Nature ;  and  over  the  wrecks  of  Time,  Silence  sits  motion 
less  in  the  arms  of  Death. 

He  arrived  at  Terracina,  and  retired  to  rest.  His  sleep  was 
filled  with  fearful  dreams :  he  woke,  late  at  noon,  languid  and 
dejected.  As  his  servant,  who  had  lived  with  him  some  years, 
attended  him  in  rising,  Godolphin  observed  on  his  countenance 
that  expression  common  to  persons  of  his  class  when  they  have 
something  which  they  wish  to  communicate,  and  are  watching 
their  opportunity. 

"Well,  Maiden!"  said  he,  ''you  look  important  this  morn- 
ing :  what  has  happened  ?  ' ' 

"  E — hem  !  Did  not  you  observe,  sir,  a  carriage  behind  us  as 
we  crossed  the  marshes  ?  Sometimes  you  might  just  see  it  at  a  dis- 
tance, in  the  moonlight." 

"  How  the  deuce  should  I,  being  within  the  carriage,  see 
behind  me  ?  No ;  I  knovr  nothing  of  the  carriage :  what  of 
it?" 

"  A  person  arrived  in  it,  sir,  a  little  after  you,  would  not  retire 
to  bed,  and  waits  you  in  your  sitting-room." 

'  A  person  !  What  person  ?  ' ' 

"  A  lady,  sir  ;  a  young  lady,"  said  the  servant,  suppressing  a 
smile. 

"Good  Heavens !"  ejaculated  Godolphin:  "leave  me."  The 
valet  obeyed. 

Godolphin,  not  for  a  moment  doubting  that  it  was  Lucilla  who 
had  thus  followed  him,  was  struck  to  the  heart  by  this  proof  of 
her  resolute  and  reckless  attachment.  In  any  other  woman  so  bold 
a  measure  would  it  is  true,  have  revolted  his  fastidious  and  some- 
what English  taste.  But  in  Lucilla,  all  that  might  have  seemed 
immodest  arose,  in  reality,  from  that  pure  and  spotless  ignorance 
which,  of  all  species  of  modesty,  is  the  most  enchanting,  the  most 
dangerous  to  its  possessor.  The  daughter  of  loneliness  and  seclu- 
sion ;  estranged  wholly  from  all  familiar  or  female  intercourse  ; 
rather  bewildered  than  in  any  way  enlightened  by  the  few  books 
of  poetry,  or  the  lighter  letters,  she  had  by  accident  read — the 
sense  of  impropriety  was  in  her  so  vague  a  sentiment,  that  every 
impulse  of  her  wild  and  impassioned  character  effaced  and  swept 
10 


146  GODOLPHIN. 

it  away.  Ignorant  of  what  is  due  to  the  reserve  of  the  sex,  and 
even  of  the  opinions  of  the  world — lax  as  the  Italian  world  is  on 
matters  of  love — she  only  saw  occasion  to  glory  in  her  tenderness, 
her  devotion,  to  one  so  elevated  in  her  fancy  as  the  English  stran- 
ger. Nor  did  there — however  unconsciously  to  herself — mingle 
a  single  more  derogatory  or  less  pure  emotion  with  her  fanatical 
worship. 

For  my  own  part,  I  think  that  few  men  understand  the  real 
nature  of  a  girl's  love.  Arising  so  vividly  as  it  does  from  the 
imagination,  nothing  that  the  mind  of  the  libertine  would  impute 
to  it  ever  (or  at  least  in  most  rare  instances)  sullies  its  weakness 
or  debases  its  folly.  I  do  not  say  the  love  is  better  for  being  thus 
solely  the  creature  of  imagination  ;  I  say  only  so  it  is  in  ninety- 
nine  out  of  a  hundred  instances  of  girlish  infatuation.  In  later 
life,  it  is  different :  in  the  experienced  woman,  forwardness  is 
always  depravity. 

With  trembling  steps  and  palpitating  heart  Godolphin  sought 
the  apartment  in  which  he  expected  to  find  Lucilla.  There,  in 
one  corner  of  the  room,  her  face  covered  with  her  mantle,  he 
beheld  her  :  he  hastened  to  that  spot ;  he  threw  himself  on  his 
knees  before  her ;  with  a  timid  hand  he  removed  the  covering 
from  her  face ;  and  through  tears,  and  paleness,  and  agitation, 
his  heart  was  touched  to  the  quick  by  its  soft  and  loving  expres- 
sion. 

"Wilt  thou  forgive  me?"  she  faltered.  "  It  was  thine  own 
letter  that  brought  me  hither.  Now  leave  me,  if  thou  canst ! " 

"  Never,  never  !  "  cried  Godolphin,  clasping  her  to  his  heart, 
"It  is  fated,  and  I  resist  no  more.  Love,  tend,  cherish  thee,  I 
will  to  my  last  hour.  I  will  be  all  to  thee  that  human  ties  can 
afford — father,  brother,  lover — all  but — ' '  He  paused ;  ' '  All 
but  husband,"  whispered  his  conscience,  but  he  silenced  its 
voice. 

"  I  may  go  with  thee  !  "  said  Lucilla,  in  wild  ecstacy ;  that  was 
her  only  thought. 

As,  when  the  notion  of  escape  occurs  to  the  insane,  their  insani 
ty  appears  to  cease;  courage,  prudence,  caution,  invention  (facul- 
ties which  they  knew  not  in  sounder  health),  flash  upon  and  sup- 
port them  as  by  an  inspiration ;  so,  a  new  genius  had  seemed 
breathed  into  Lucilla  by  the  idea  of  rejoining  Godolphin.  She 
imagined,  not  without  justice,  that,  could  she  throw  in  the  way 
of  her  return  home  an  obstacle  of  that  worldly  nature  which  he 
seemed  to  dread  she  should  encounter,  his  chief  reason  for  resist- 
ing her  attachment  would  be  removed.  Encouraged  by  this 
thought,  and  more  than  ever  transported  by  her  love  since  he  had 


GODOLPHIN.  147 

expressed  a  congenial  sentiment ;  excited  into  emulation  by  the 
generous  tone  of  his  letter,  and  softened  into  yet  deeper  weakness 
by  its  tenderness  ;  she  had  resolved  upon  the  bold  step  she  adopt- 
ed. A  vetturino  lived  near  the  gate  of  St.  Sebastian  ;  she  had 
sought  him ;  and  at  sight  of  the  money  which  Godolphin  had  sent 
her,  the  vetturino  willingly  agreed  to  transport  her  to  whatever 
point  on  the  road  to  Naples  she  might  desire — nay,  even  to  keep 
pace  with  the  more  rapid  method  of  travelling  which  Godolphin 
pursued.  Early  on  the  morning  of  his  departure  she  had  sought 
her  station  within  sight  of  Godolphin's  palazzo;  and  ten  minutes 
after  his  departure  the  vetturino  bore  her,  delighted  but  trembling, 
on  the  same  road.  The  Italians  are  ordinarily  good-natured,  es- 
pecially when  they  are  paid  for  it  j  and  courteous  to  females, 
especially  if  they  have  any  suspicion  of  the  influence  of  the  belle 
passion.  The  vetturino' s  foresight  had  supplied  the  deficiencies 
of  her  inexperience  ;  he  had  reminded  her  of  the  necessity  of  pro- 
curing her  passport ;  and  he  undertook  that  all  other  difficulties 
should  solely  devolve  on  him.  And  thus  Lucilla  was  now  under 
the  same  roof  with  one  for  whom,  indeed,  she  was  unaware  of  the 
sacrifice  she  made ;  but  whom,  -  despite  of  all  that  clouded  and 
separated  their  after- lot,  she  loved  to  the  last,  with  a  love  as  reck- 
less and  strong  as  then — a  love  passing  the  love  of  woman,  and 
defying  the  common  ordinances  of  time. 

******* 
On  the  blue  waters  that  break  with  a  deep  and  far  voice  along 
the  rocks  of  that  delicious  shore,  above  which  the  mountain  that 
rises  behind  Terracina  scatters  to  the  air  the  odors  of  the  citron 
and  the  orange ;  on  that  sounding  and  immemorial  sea  the  stars, 
like  the  hopes  of  a  brighter  world  upon  the  darkness  and  unrest  of 
life,  shone  down  with  a  solemn  but  tender  light.  On  that  shore 
stood  Lucilla  and  he — the  wandering  stranger — in  whom  she  had 
hoarded  the  peace  and  the  hopes  of  earth.  Hers  was  the  first  and 
purple  flush  of  the  love  which  has  attained  its  object :  that  sweet 
and  quiet  fulness  of  content ;  that  heavenly,  all-subduing  and 
subdued  delight,  with  which  the  heart  slumbers  in  the  excess  of 
its  own  rapture.  Care,  the  forethought  of  changes,  even  the 
shadowy  and  vague  mournfulness  of  passion,  are  felt  not  in  those 
voluptuous  but  tranquil  moments.  Like  the  waters  that  rolled, 
deep  and  eloquent,  before  her,  every  feeling  within  was  but  the 
mirror  of  an  all-gentle  and  cloudless  heaven.  Her  head  half  de- 
clined upon  the  breast  of  her  young  lover,  she  caught  the  beating 
of  his  heart,  and  in  it  heard  all  the  sounds  of  what  was  now 
become  to  her  the  world. 


1 48  GODOLPHIN. 

And  still  and  solitary  deepened  around  them  the  mystic  and 
lovely  night.  How  divine  was  that  sense  and  consciousness  of  sol- 
itude .'  How,  as  it  thrilled  within  them,  they  clung  closer  to  each 
other  !  Theirs  as  yet  was  that  blissful  and  unsated  time  when 
the  touch  of  their  hands,  clasped  together,  was  in  itself  a  happi- 
ness of  emotion  too  deep  for  words.  And  ever,  as  his  eyes 
sought  hers,  the  tears  which  the  sensitiveness  of  her  frame,  the 
very  luxury  of  her  overflowing  heart,  called  forth,  glittered  in  the 
tranquil  stars  a  moment  and  were  kissed  away.  "  Do  not  look 
up  to  Heaven,  my  love,"  whispered  Godolphin,  "lest  thou 
shouldst  think  of  any  world  but  this  !  " 

Poor  Lucilla  !  Will  any  one  who  idly  glances  over  this  page 
sympathize  one  moment  with  the  springs  of  thy  brief  joys  and 
thy  bitter  sorrow  !  The  page  on  which,  in  stamping  a  record  of 
thee,  I  would  fain  retain  thy  memory  from  oblivion  ;  that  page  is 
an  emblem  of  thyself — a  short  existence,  confounded  with  the 
herd  to  which  it  has  no  resemblance,  and  then  amidst  the  rush 
and  tumult  of  the  world,  forgotten  and  cast  away  forever  ! 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

RETURN  TO  LADY  ERPINGHAM. — LADY  ERPINGHAM  FALLS  ILL. LORD 

ERPINGHAM  RESOLVES  TO  GO  ABROAD. — PLUTARCH  UPON  MUSICAL 
INSTRUMENTS. — PARTY  AT  ERPINGHAM  HOUSE. — SAVILLE  ON  SO- 
CIETY AND  THE  TASTE  FOR  THE  LITTLE. — DAVID  MANDEVILLE. — 
WOMEN,  THEIR  INFLUENCE  AND  EDUCATION. — THE  NECESSITY  OF 
AN  OBJECT. — RELIGION. 

As,  after  a  long  dream,  we  rise  to  the  occupations  of  life,  even 
so,  with  an  awakening  and  more  active  feeling,  I  return  from 
characters  removed  from  the  ordinary  world — like  Volktman*  and 
his  daughter — to  the  brilliant  heroine  of  my  narrative. 

There  is  a  certain  tone  about  London  society  which  enfeebles 
the  mind  without  exciting  it ;  and  this  state  of  temperament, 
more  than  all  others,  engenders  satiety  In  classes  that  border 
upon  the  highest  this  effect  is  less  evident ;  for  in  them,  there  is 
some  object  to  contend  for.  Fashion  gives  them  an  inducement. 
They  struggle  to  emulate  the  ton  of  their  superiors.  It  is  an  am- 

*  After  all,  an  astrologer — nay,  a  cabalist — is  not  so  monstrous  a  prodigy  in  the  nine- 
teenth century!  In  the  year  1801  Lackington  published  a  quarto,  entitled,  "  Magus  ;  a 
Complete  System  of  Occult  Philosophy  ;  treating  of  Alchemy,  the  Cabalistic  Art,  Natural 
and  Celestial  Magic,"  etc. — and  a.  very  impudent  publication  it  is  too.  That  Raphael 
should  put  forth  astrological  manuals  is  not  a  proof  of  his  belief  in  the  science  he  professes  ; 
but  that  it  should  answer  to  Raphael  to  put  them  forth,  shows  a  tendency  to  belief  in  his 
purchasers. 


GODOLPHIN.  149 

bition  of  trifles,  it  is  true ;  but  it  is  still  ambition.  It  frets,  it 
irritates,  but  it  keeps  them  alive.  The  great  are  the  true  victims 
of  ennui.  The  more  firmly  seated  their  rank,  the  more  estab- 
lished their  position,  the  more  their  life  stagnates  into  insipidity. 
Constance  was  at  the  height  of  her  wishes.  No  one  was  so 
courted,  so  adored.  One  after  one  she  had  humbled  and  subdued 
all  those  who,  before  her  marriage,  had  trampled  on  her  pride  : 
or  who,  after  it,  had  resisted  her  pretensions  :  a  look  from  her 
had  become  a  triumph,  and  a  smile  conferred  a  rank  on  its  re- 
ceiver. But  this  empire  palled  upon  her  :  of  too  large  a  mind 
to  be  satisfied  with  petty  pleasures  and  unreal  distinctions,  she 
still  felt  the  SOMETHING  of  life  was  wanting.  She  was  not  blessed 
or  cursed  (as  it  may  be)  with  children,  and  she  had  no  compan- 
ion in  her  husband.  There  might  be  times  in  which  she  regretted 
her  choice,  dazzling  as  it  had  proved ;  but  she  complained  not  of 
sorrow,  but  monotony. 

Political  intrigue  could  not  fill  up  the  vacuum  of  which  Con- 
stance daily  complained  ;  and  of  private  intrigue  the  then  purity 
of  her  nature  was  incapable.  When  people  have  really  nothing 
to  do,  they  generally  fall  ill  upon  it ;  and  at  length  the  rich  color 
grew  faint  upon  Lady  Erpingham's  cheek  ;  her  form  wasted ;  the 
physicians  hinted  at  consumption,  and  recommended  a  warmer 
clime.  Lord  Erpingham  seized  at  the  proposition  ;  he  was  fond 
of  Italy ;  he  was  bored  with  England. 

Very  stupid  people  often  become  ven  musical :  it  is  a  sort  of 
pretension  to  intellect  that  suits  their  capacities.  Plutarch  says 
somewhere,  that  the  best  musical  instruments  are  made  from  the 
jaw-bones  of  asses.  Plutarch  never  made  a  more  sensible  observ- 
ation. Lord  Erpingham  had  of  late  taken  greatly  to  operas  :  he 
talked  of  writing  one  himself;  and  not  being  a  performer  he 
consoled  himself  by  becoming  a  patron.  Italy,  therefore,  pre- 
sented to  him  manifold  captivations — he  thought  of  fiddling,  but 
lie  talked  only  of  his  wife's  health.  Amidst  the  regrets  of  the 
London  world,  they  made  their  arrangements,  and  prepared  to 
set  out  at  the  end  of  the  season  for  the  land  of  Paganini  and 
Julius  Caesar. 

Two  nights  before  their  departure,  Lady  Erpingham  gave  a 
farewell  party  to  her  more  intimate  acquaintance.  Saville,  who 
always  contrived  to  be  well  with  every  one  who  was  worth  the 
trouble  it  cost  him,  was  of  course  among  the  guests.  Years  had 
somewhat  scathed  him  since  he  last  appeared  on  our  stage. 
Women  had  ceased  to  possess  much  attraction  for  his  jaded  eyes  ; 
gaming  and  speculation  had  gradually  spread  over  the  tastes  once 
directed  to  other  pursuits.  His  vivacity  had  deserted  him  in 


150  GODOLPHIN. 

great  measure,  as  years  and  infirmity  began  to  stagnate  and  knot 
up  the  current  of  his  veins ;  but  conversation  still  possessed  for 
and  derived  from  him  its  wonted  attraction.  The  sparkling  jeu 
d*  esprit  had  only  sobered  down  into  the  quiet  sarcasm ;  and  if 
his  wit  rippled  less  freshly  to  the  breeze  of  the  present  moment, 
it  was  colored  more  richly  by  the  glittering  sands  which  rolled 
down  from  the  experience  that  overshadowed  the  current.  For 
the  wisdom  of  the  worldly  is  like  the  mountains  that,  sterile  with- 
out, conceal  within  them  unprofitable  ore :  only  the  filings  and 
particles  escape  to  the  daylight  and  sparkle  in  the  wave ;  the  rest 
wastes  idly  within.  The  Pactolus  takes  but  the  sand-drifts  from 
the  hoards  lost  to  use  in  the  Tmolus. 

"  And  how,"  said  Saville,  seating  himself  by  Lady  Erping- 
ham  ;  ' '  How  shall  we  bear  London  when  you  are  gone  ?  When 
society — the  everlasting  draught — had  begun  to  pall  upon  us,  you 
threw  your  pearl  into  the  cup ;  and  now  we  are  grown  so  luxurious, 
that  we  shall  never  bear  the  wine  without  the  pearl." 

' '  But  the  pearl  gave  no  taste  to  the  wine :  it  only  dissolved 
itself — idly,  and  in  vain." 

' '  Ah,  my  dear  Lady  Erpingham,  the  dullest  of  us,  having  once 
seen  the  pearl,  could  at  least  imagine  that  we  were  able  to  appre- 
ciate the  subtleties  of  its  influence.  Where,  in  this  little  world  of 
tedious  realities,  can  we  find  anything  even  to  imagine  about, 
when  you  abandon  us  ?  " 

' '  Nay  !  do  you  conceive  that  I  am  so  ignorant  of  the  frame- 
work of  society  as  to  suppose  that  I  shall  not  be  easily  replaced  ? 
King  succeeds  king,  without  reference  to  the  merits  of  either  :  so, 
in  London,  idol  follows  idol,  though  one  be  of  jewels  and  the 
other  of  brass.  Perhaps,  when  I  return,  I  shall  find  you  kneeling 
to  the  dull  Lady  A ,  or  worshipping  the  hideous  Lady  Z ." 

"  Le  temps  assez  souvent  a  rendu  legitime 
Ce  qui  sembloit  d'abord  ne  se  pouvoir 
sans  crime ;  " 

answered  Saville,  with  a  mock-heroic  air.  "  The  fact  is,  that  we 
are  an  indolent  people ;  the  person  who  succeeds  the  most  with 

MS  has  but  to  push  the  most.     You  know  how  Mrs. ,  in  spite 

of  her  red  arms,  her  red  gown,  her  city  pronunciation,  and  her 
city  connections,  managed — by  dint  of  perseverance  alone — to 
become  a  dispenser  of  consequence  to  the  very  countesses  whom 
she  at  first  could  scarcely  coax  into  a  courtesy.  The  person  who 
can  stand  ridicule  and  rudeness  has  only  to  desire  to  become  the 
fashion — she  or  he  must  be  so  sooner  or  later." 

(l  Of  the  immutability  of  one  thing  among  all  the  changes  J 


GODOLPHIN.  151 

may  witness  on  my  return,  at  least  I  am  certain  ;  no  one  still  will 
dare  to  think  for  himself.  The  great  want  of  each  individual  is, 
the  want  of  an  opinion  !  For  instance, — who  judges  of  a  picture 
from  his  own  knowledge  of  painting  ?  Who  does  not  wait  to  hear 

what  Mr.  ,  or  Lord ,  (one  of  the  six  or  seven  privileged 

connoisseurs)  says  of  it  ?  Nay,  not  only  the  fate  of  a  single  pic- 
ture, but  of  a  whole  school  of  painting,  depends  upon  the  caprice 
of  some  one  of  the  self-elected  dictators.  The  King,  or  the  Duke 

of ,  has  but  to  love  the  Dutch  school  and  ridicule  the  Italian, 

and  behold  a  Raphael  will  not  sell,  and  a  Teniers  rises  into  infi- 
nite value  !  Dutch  representations  of  candlesticks  and  boors  are 
sought  after  with  the  most  rapturous  delight ;  the  most  disagree- 
able objects  of  nature  become  the  most  worshipped  treasures  of 
art ;  and  we  emulate  each  other  in  testifying  our  exaltation  of  taste 
by  contending  for  the  pictured  vulgarities  by  which  taste  itself  is 
the  most  essentially  degraded.  In  fact,  too,  the  meaner  the 
object,  the  more  certain  it  is  with  us  of  becoming  the 
rage.  In  the  theatre,  we  run  after  the  farce;  in  painting,  we 
worship  the  Dutch  school ;  in — " 

"  Literature  ?  "  said  Saville. 

"No  !  Our  literature  still  breathes  of  something  noble;  but 
why  ?  Because  books  do  not  always  depend  upon  a  clique.  A 
book,  in  order  to  succeed,  does  not  require  the  opinion  of  Mr. 
Saville  or  Lady  Erpingham  so  much  as  a  picture  or  a  ballet." 

"  I  am  not  sure  of  that,"  answered  Saville,  as  he  withdrew  pres- 
ently afterwards  to  a  card-table,  to  share  in  the  premeditated 
plunder  of  a  young  banker  who  was  proud  of  the  honor  of  being 
ruined  by  persons  of  rank. 

In  another  part  of  the  rooms,  Constance  found  a  certain  old 
philosopher,  whom  I  will  call  David  Mandeville  There  was 
something  about  this  man  that  always  charmed  those  who  had 
sense  enough  to  be  discontented  with  the  ordinary  inhabitants  of 
the  Microcosm, — Society.  The  expression  of  his  countenance 
was  different  from  that  of  others  :  there  was  a  breathing  goodness 
in  his  face — an  expansion  of  mind  on  his  forehead.  You  per- 
ceived at  once  that  he  did  not  live  among  triflers,  nor  agitate  him- 
self with  trifles.  Serenity  beamed  from  his  look,  but  it  was  the 
serenity  of  thought.  Constance  sat  down  by  him.  "  Are  you 
not  sorry,"  said  Mandeville..  "to  leave  England?  You,  who 
have  made  yourself  the  centre  of  a  c;rcle  which,  for  the  varieties 
of  its  fascination,  has  never  perhaps  been  equalled  in  this  coun- 
try? Wealth — rank — even  wit — ethers  might  assemble  round 
them  :  but  none  ever  before  convened  into  one  splendid  galaxy  all 
who  were  eminent  in  art,  famous  in  letters,  wise  in  politics,  and 


152  GODOLPHilSf. 

even  (for  who  but  you  were  ever  above  rivalship  ?)  attractive  in 
beauty.  I  should  have  thought  it  easier  for  us  to  fly  from  the 
Armida.  than  for  the  Armida  to  renounce  the  scene  of  her  enchant- 
ment— the  scene  in  which  De  Stael  bowed  to  the  charms  of  her 
conversation,  and  Byron  celebrated  those  of  her  person." 

We  may  conceive  the  spell  Constance  had  cast  around  her, 
when  even  Philosophy  (and  Mandeville  of  all  philosophers)  had 
learned  to  flatter :  but  his  flattery  was  sincerity. 

"  Alas  !  "  said  Constance,  sighing,  "  even  if  your  compliment 
were  altogether  true,  you  have  mentioned  nothing  that  should 
cost  me  regret.  Vanity  is  one  source  of  happiness,  but  it  dees 
not  suffice  to  recompense  us  for  the  absence  of  all  others.  In 
leaving  England,  I  leave  the  scene  of  everlasting  weariness :  I 
am  the  victim  of  a  feeling  of  sameness,  and  I  look  with  hope  to 
the  prospect  of  change." 

"Poor  thing!  "  said  the  old  philosopher,  gazing  mournfully 
on  a  creature  who,  so  resplendent  with  advantages,  yet  felt  the 
crumpled  rose-leaf  more  than  the  luxury  of  the  couch.  "  Wher- 
ever you  go,  the  same  polished  society  will  present  to  you  the 
same  monotony.  All  courts  are  alike ;  men  have  change  in 
action,  but  to  women  of  your  rank,  all  scenes  are  alike.  You 
must  not  look  without  for  an  object — you  must  create  one  within. 
To  be  happy  we  must  render  ourselves  independent  of  others." 

"  Like  all  philosophers,  you  advise  the  Impossible,"  said  Con- 
stance. 

"  How  so?  Have  not  the  generality  of  your  sex  their  peculiar 
object  ?  One  has  the  welfare  of  her  children ;  another  the  inter- 
est of  her  husband ;  a  third  makes  a  passion  of  economy ;  a 
fourth  of  extravagance ;  a  fifth  of  fashion ;  a  sixth  of  solitude. 
Your  friend  yonder  is  always  employed  in  nursing  her  own 
health  :  hypochondria  supplies  her  with  an  object ;  she  is  really 
happy,  because  she  fancies  herself  ill.  Every  one  you  name  has 
an  object  in  life  that  drives  away  ennui,  save  yourself." 

"I  have  one  too,"  said  Constance,  smiling,  "  but  it  does  not 
fill  up  all  the  spaces  of  time.  The  intervals  between  the  acts  are 
longer  than  the  acts  themselves." 

"  Is  your  object  religion  ?  "  asked  Mandeville  simply. 

Constance  was  startled  ;  the  question  was  novel.  "  I  fear  not," 
said  she,  after  a  moment's  hesitation,  and  with  a  downcast  face. 

"As  I  thought,"  returned  Mandeville.  "  Now  listen.  The 
reason  why  you  feel  weariness  more  than  those  around  you,  is 
solely  because  your  mind  is  more  expansive.  Small  minds  easily 
find  objects :  trifles  amuse  them ;  but  a  high  soul  covets  things 
beyond  its  daily  reach  ;  trifles  occupy  its  aim  mechanically  ;  the 


GODOLPHIN.  15  $ 

thought  still  wanders  restless.  This  is  the  case  with  you.  Your 
intellect  preys  upon  itself.  You  would  have  been  happier  if  your 
rank  had  been  less;  "  Constance  winced  (she  thought  of  Godol- 
phin) ;  "for  then  you  would  have  been  ambitious,  and  aspired  to 
the  very  rank  that  now  palls  upon  you."  Mandeville  continued : 

"You  women  are  at  once  debarred  from  public  life,  and  yet 
influence  it.  You  are  the  prisoners,  and  yet  the  despots  of  soci- 
ety. Have  you  talents  ?  It  is  criminal  to  indulge  them  in  pub- 
lic :  and  thus,  as  talent  cannot  be  stifled,  it  is  misdirected  in  pri- 
vate :  you  seek  ascendency  over  your  own  limited  circle ;  and 
what  should  have  been  genius,  degenerates  into  cunning. 
Brought  up  from  your  cradles  to  dissembling,  your  most  beauti- 
ful emotions — your  finest  principles — are  always  tinctured  with 
artifice.  As  your  talents,  being  stripped  of  their  wings,  are 
driven  to  creep  along  the  earth,  and  imbibe  its  mire  and  clay ; 
so  are  your  affections  perpetually  checked  and  tortured  into  con- 
ventional paths,  and  a  spontaneous  feeling  is  punished  as  a  delib- 
erate crime.  You  are  untaught  the  broad  and  sound  principles 
of  life  :  all  that  you  know  of  morals  are  its  decencies  and  forms. 
Thus  you  are  incapable  of  estimating  the  public  virtues  and  the 
public  deficiencies  of  a  brother  or  a  son  :  and  one  reason  why  we 
have  no  Brutus,  is  because  you  have  no  Portia.  Turkey  has  its 
seraglio  for  the  person ;  but  Custom,  in  Europe,  has  also  a  serag- 
lio for  the  mind." 

Constance  smiled  at  the  philosopher's  passion ;  but  she  was  a 
woman,  and  she  was  moved  by  it. 

"  Perhaps,"  said  she,  "  in  the  progress  of  events,  the  state  of 
the  women  may  be  improved  as  well  as  that  of  the  men." 

"  Doubtless,  at  some  future  stage  of  the  world.  And  believe 
me.  Lady  Erpingham,  politician  and  schemer  as  you  are,  that  no 
legislative  reform  alone  will  improve  mankind :  it  is  the  social 
state  which  requires  reformation." 

"  But  you  asked  me  some  minutes  since,"  said  Constance,  after 
a  pause,  "  if  the  object  of  my  pursuit  was  religion.  I  disap- 
pointed but  not  surprised  you  by  my  answer." 

' '  Yes ;  you  grieved  me,  because,  in  your  case,  religion  would 
alone  fill  the  dreary  vacuum  of  your  time.  For,  with  your  en- 
larged and  cultivated  mind,  you  would  not  view  the  grandest  of 
earthly  questions  in  a  narrow  and  sectarian  light.  You  would 
not  think  religion  consisted  in  a  sanctified  demeanor,  in  an  osten- 
tatious almsgiving,  in  a  harsh  judgment  of  all  without  the  pale  of 
your  opinions.  You  would  behold  in  it  a  benign  and  harmoni- 
ous system  of  morality,  which  takes  from  ceremony  enough  not  to 
render  it  tedious  but  impres-i  e.  The  school  of  the  Bayles  and 


154  GODOLPHIN. 

Voltaires  is  annihilated.  Men  begin  now  to  feel  that  to  philoso- 
phize is  not  to  sneer.  In  Doubt  we  are  stopped  short  at  every 
outlet  beyond  the  Sensual.  In  Belief  lies  the  secret  of  all  our  val- 
uable exertion.  Two  sentiments  are  enough  to  preserve  even  the 
idlest  temper  from  stagnation — a  desire  and  a  hope.  What  then 
can  we  say  of  the  desire  to  be  useful,  and  the  hope  to  be  immor- 
tal?" 

This  was  language  Constance  had  not  often  heard  before,  nor 
was  it  frequent  in  the  lips  of  him  who  now  uttered  it.  But  an 
interest  in  the  fate  and  happiness  of  one  in  whom  he  saw  so  much 
to  admire  had  made  Mandeville  anxious  that  she  should  entertain 
some  principle  which  he  could  also  esteem.  And  there  was  a  fer- 
vor, a  sincerity,  in  his  voice  and  manner  that  thrilled  to  the  very 
heart  of  Lady  Erpingham.  She  pressed  his  hand  in  silence.  She 
thought  afterwards  over  his  words ;  but  worldly  life  is  not  easily 
accessible  to  any  lasting  impressions  save  those  of  vanity  and  love. 
Religion  has  two  sources ;  the  habit  of  earlier  years,  or  the  pro- 
cess of  after  thought.  But  to  Constance  had  not  been  fated  the 
advantage  of  the  first ;  and  how  can  deep  thought  of  another 
world  be  a  favorite  employment  with  the  scheming  woman  of 
this? 

This  is  the  only  time  that  Mandeville  appears  in  this  work ;  a 
type  of  the  rarity  of  the  intervention  of  religious  wisdom  on  the 
scenes  of  real  life  ! 

"By  the  way,"  said  Saville,  as,  in  departing,  he  encountered 
Constance  by  the  door,  and  made  his  final  adieus ;  "by  the  way, 
you  will  perhaps  meet,  somewhere  in  Italy,  my  old  young  friend, 
Percy  Godolphin.  He  has  not  been  pleased  to  prate  of  his  where- 
about to  me ;  but  I  hear  that  he  has  been  seen  lately  at  Naples. ' ' 

Constance  colored,  and  her  heart  beat  violently ;  but  she  an- 
swered indifferently,  and  turned  away. 

The  next  morning  they  set  off  for  Italy.  But  within  one  week 
from  that  day,  what  a  change  awaited  Constance  ! 

CHAPTER   XXXIV. 

AMBITION  VINDICATED. — THE  HOME  OF  GODOLPHIN  AND  LUCILLA. — 
LUCILLA'S  MIND. — THE  EFFECT  OF  HAPPY  LOVE  ON  FEMALE  TAL- 
ENT.— THE  EVE  OF  FAREWELL. — LUCILLA  ALONE. — TEST  OF  A 

WOMAN'S  AFFECTION. 

O  MUCH-ABUSED  and  highly-slandered  passion !  Passion  rather 
of  the  soul  than  the  heart :  hateful  to  the  pseudo-moralist,  but 
viewed  with  favoring,  though  not  undiscriminating,  eyes  by  the 


GODOLPHIN.  155 

true  philosopher  ;  bright  winged  and  august  AMBITION  !  It  is  well 
for  fools  to  revile  thee,  because  thou  art  liable,  like  other  utilities, 
to  abuse  !  The  wind  uproots  the  oak ;  but  for  every  oak  it 
uproots,  it  scatters  a  thousand  acorns.  Ixion  embraced  the  cloud, 
but  from  the  embrace  sprang  a  hero.  Thou,  too,  hast  thy  fits  of 
violence  and  storm  :  but  without  thee,  life  would  stagnate ;  thou, 
too,  embracest  thy  clouds ;  but  even  thy  clouds  have  the  demigods 
for  their  offspring  ! 

It  was  the  great  and  prevailing  misfortune  of  Godolphin's  life 
that  he  had  early  taught  himself  to  be  superior  to  exertion.  His 
talents,  therefore,  only  preyed  on  himself;  and  instead  of  the  vig- 
orous and  daring  actor  of  the  world,  he  was  alternately  the  indolent 
sensualist  or  the  solitary  dreamer.  He  did  not  view  the  stir  of 
the  great  Babel  as  a  man  with  a  wholesome  mind  should  do ;  and 
thus  from  his  infirmities  we  draw  a  moral.  The  moral  is  not  the 
worse,  in  that  it  opposes  the  trite  moralities  of  those  who  would 
take  from  action  its  motive ;  the  men  of  genius,  who  are  not  also 
men  of  ambition,  are  either  humorists,  or  visionaries,  or  hypo- 
chondriacs. 

By  the  side  of  one  of  the  Italian  lakes  Godolphin  and  Lucilla 
fixed  their  abode ;  and  here  the  young  idealist  for  some  time 
imagined  himself  happy.  Never  until  now  so  fond  of  nature  as  of 
cities,  he  gave  himself  up  to  the  enchantment  of  the  Eden  around 
him.  He  spent  the  long  sunny  hours  of  noon  on  the  smooth 
lake,  or  among  the  sheltering  trees  by  which  it  was  encircled. 
The  scenes  he  had  witnessed  in  the  world  became  to  him  the 
food  of  quiet  meditation,  and  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  thought 
did  not  weary  him  with  its  sameness. 

When  his  steps  turned  homeward,  the  anxious  form  of  Lucilla 
waited  for  him :  her  eye  brightened  at  his  approach,  her  spirit 
escaped  restraint  and  bounded  into  joy  :  and  Godolphin,  touched 
by  her  delight,  became  eager  to  witness  it ;  he  felt  the  magnet  of 
a  Home.  Yet  as  the  first  enthusiasm  of  passion  died  away,  he  could 
not  but  be  sensible  that  Lucilla  was  scarcely  a  companion.  Her 
fancy  was  indeed  lively,  and  her  capacity  acute ;  but  experience  had 
set  a  confined  limit  to  her  ideas.  She  had  nothing  save  love  and  a 
fitful  temperament  upon  which  she  could  draw  for  conversation. 
Those  whose  education  debars  them  from  deriving  instruction 
from  things,  have  in  general  the  power  to  extract  amusement  from 
persons :  they  can  talk  of  the  ridiculous  Mrs.  So-and-so,  or  the 
absurd  Mr.  Blank.  But  our  lovers  saw  no  society  ;  and  thus  their 
commune  was  thrown  entirely  on  their  internal  resources. 

There  was  always  that  in  the  peculiar  mind  of  Godolphin  which 
was  inclined  towards  ideas  too  refined  and  subtle  even  for  persons 


156  GODOLPHltf. 

of  cultivated  intellect.  If  Constance  could  scarcely  comprehend 
the  tone  of  his  character,  we  may  believe  that  to  Lucilla  he  was 
wholly  a  mystery.  This,  perhaps,  enhanced  her  love,  but  the 
consciousness  of  it  disappointed  his.  He  felt  that  what  he  con- 
sidered the  noblest  faculties  he  possessed  were  unappreciated.  He 
was  sometimes  angry  with  Lucilla  that  she  loved  only  those  qual- 
ities in  his  character  which  he  shared  with  the  rest  of  mankind. 
His  speculative  and  Hamlet-like  temper  (let  us  here  take  Goethe's 
vie  A-  of  Hamlet,  and  combine  a  certain  weakness  with  the  finer 
traits  of  the  royal  dreamer),  perpetually  deserted  the  solid  world, 
and  flew  to  aerial  creations.  He  could  not  appreciate  the  present. 
Had  Godolphin  loved  Lucilla  as  he  once  thought  that  he  should 
love  her,  the  beauties  of  her  character  would  have  blinded  him  to 
its  defects;  but  his  passion  had  been  too  sudden  to  be  thoroughly 
grounded.  It  had  arisen  from  the  knowledge  of  her  affection, 
not  grown  step  by  step  from  the  natural  bias  of  his  own.  Between 
the  interval  of  liking  and  possession,  love  (to  be  durable)  should 
pass  through  many  stages.  The  doubt,  the  fear,  the  first  pressure 
of  the  hand,  the  first  kiss,  each  should  be  an  epoch  for  remem- 
brance to  cling  to.  In  moments  of  after  coolness  or  anger,  the 
mind  should  fly  from  the  sated  present  to  the  million  tender  and 
freshening  associations  of  the  past.  With  these  associations  the 
affection  renews  its  youth.  How  vast  a  store  of  melting  reflections, 
how  countless  an  accumulation  of  the  spells  that  preserve  con- 
stancy, does  that  love  forfeit,  in  which  the  memory  only  com- 
mences with  possession. 

And  the  more  delicate  and  thoughtful  our  nature,  the  more 
powerful  are  these  associations.  Do  they  not  constitute  the 
immense  difference  between  the  love  and  the  intrigue?  All  things 
that  savor  of  youth  make  our  most  exquisite  sensations,  whether 
to  experience,  or  recall — thus,  in  the  seasons  of  the  year,  we 
prize  the  spring;  and  in  the  effusions  of  the  heart,  the  courtship. 

Beautiful,  too,  and  tender — wild  and  fresh  in  her  tenderness — 
as  Lucilla  was,  there  was  that  in  her  character,  in  addition  to  her 
want  of  education,  which  did  not  wholly  accord  with  Godolphin's 
preconception  of  the  being  his  fancy  had  conjured  up.  His  calm 
and  profound  nature  desired  one  in  whom  he  could  not  only  con- 
fide, but,  as  it  were,  repose.  Thus  one  great  charm  that  had 
attracted  him  to  Constance  was  the  evenness  and  smoothness  of 
her  temper.  But  the  self-formed  mind  of  Lucilla  was  ever  in  a 
bright,  and  to  him  a  wearying,  agitation ;  tears  and  smiles  per- 
petually chased  each  other.  Not  comprehending  his  character, 
but  thinking  only  and  wholly  of  him,  she  distracted  herself  with 
conjectures  and  suspicions,  which  she  was  too  ingenuous  and  too 


6ODOLPH1N.  15? 

impassioned  to  conceal.  After  watching  him  for  hours,  she  would 
weep  that  he  did  not  turn  from  his  books  or  his  revery  to  search  also 
for  her,  with  eyes  equally  yearning  and  tender  as  her  own.  The  fear 
in  absence,  the  absorbed  devotion  when  present,  that  absolutely 
made  her  existence,  she  was  wretched  because  he  did  not  recipro- 
cate with  the  same  intensity  of  soul.  She  could  conceive  nothing 
of  love  but  that  which  she  felt  herself;  and  she  saw,  daily  and 
hourly,  that  in  that  love  he  did  not  sympathize ;  and  therefore 
she  embittered  her  life  by  thinking  that  he  did  not  return  her 
affection. 

"You  wrong  us  both,"  said  he  in  answer  to  her  tearful  accusa- 
tions; "  but  our  sex  love  differently  from  yours." 

"Ah,"  she  replied,  "  I  feel  that  love  has  no  varieties  :  there  is 
but  one  love,  but  there  may  be  many  counterfeits." 

Godolphin  smiled  to  think  how  the  untutored  daughter  of  na- 
ture had  unconsciously  uttered  the  sparkling  aphorism  of  the  most 
artificial  of  maxim-makers.*  Lucilla  saw  the  smile,  and  tears 
flowed  instantly. 

"  Thou  mockest  me." 

"Thou  art  a  little  fool,"  said  Godolphin,  kindly,  and  he 
kissed  away  the  storm. 

And  this  was  ever  an  easy  matter.  There  was  nothing  unfemi- 
nine  or  sullen  in  Lucilla's  irregular  moods ;  a  kind  word,  a  kind 
caress,  allayed  them  in  an  instant,  and  turned  the  transient  sor- 
row into  sparkling  delight.  But  they  who  know  how  irksome  is 
the  perpetual  trouble  of  conciliation  to  a  man  meditative  and  in- 
dolent like  Godolphin,  will  appreciate  the  pain  that  even  her  ten- 
derness occasioned  him. 

There  is  one  thing  very  noticeable  in  women  when  they  have 
once  attained  the  object  of  their  life — the  sudden  check  that  is 
given  to  the  impulses  of  their  genius !  Content  to  have  found  the 
realization  of  their  chief  hope,  they  do  net  look  beyond  to  other 
but  lesser  objects,  as  they  had  wont  to  do  before.  Hence  we  see 
so  many  who,  before  marriage,  strike  us  with  admiration,  from 
the  vividness  of  their  talents,  and  after  marriage  settle  down  into 
the  mere  machine.  We  wonder  that  we  ever  feared,  while  we 
praised,  the  brilliancy  of  an  intellect,  that  seems  now  never  to 
wander  from  the  limits  of  house  and  hearth.  So  with  poor  Lu- 
cilla ;  her  restless  mind  and  ardent  genius  had  once  seized  on 
every  object  within  their  reach :  she  had  taught  herself  music  ; 
she  had  learned  the  colorings  and  lines  of  art;  not  a  book  came 
in  her  way,  but  she  would  have  sought  to  extract  from  it  a  new 

•Rochefoucauld. 


15$  GODOLPHIN. 

idea.  But  she  was  now  with  Godolphin,  and  all  other  occupa- 
tions for  thought  were  gone ;  she  had  nothing  beyond  his  love 
to  wish  for,  nothing  beyond  his  character  to  learn.  He  was  the  cir- 
cle of  hope,  and  her  heart  its  centre  ;  all  lines  were  equal  to  that 
heart,  so  that  they  touched  him.  It  is  clear  that  this  devotion 
prevented  her,  however,  from  fitting  herself  to  be  his  companion; 
she  did  not  seek  to  accomplish  herself,  but  to  study  him  :  thus, 
in  her  extreme  love  was  another  reason  why  that  love  was  not 
adequately  returned. 

But  Godolphin  felt  all  the  responsibility  that  he  had  taken  on 
himself.  He  felt  how  utterly  the  happiness  of  this  poor  and  soli- 
tary child — for  a  child  she  was  in  character,  and  almost  in  years 
— depended  upon  him.  He  roused  himself,  therefore,  from  his 
ordinary  selfishness,  and  rarely,  if  ever,  gave  way  to  the  irritation 
which  she  unknowingly  but  constantly  kept  alive.  The  balmy 
and  delicious  climate,  the  liquid  serenity  of  the  air,  the  majestic 
repose  with  which  Nature  invested  the  loveliness  that  surrounded 
their  home,  contributed  to  soften  and  calm  his  mind.  And  he 
had  persuaded  Lucilla  to  look  without  despair  upon  his  occasional 
although  short  absences.  Sometimes  he  passed  two  or  three 
weeks  at  Rome,  sometimes  at  Naples  or  Florence.  He  knew  so 
well  how  necessary  such  intervals  of  absence  are  to  the  preserva- 
tion of  love,  to  the  defeat  of  that  satiety  which  creeps  over  us  with 
custom,  that  he  had  resolutely  enforced  it  as  a  necessity,  although 
always  under  the  excuse  of  business — a  plea  that  Lucilla  could 
understand  and  not  resist ;  for  the  word  business  seemed  to  her 
like  destiny — a  call,  that,  however  odious,  we  cannot  disobey.  At 
first,  indeed,  she  was  disconsolate  at  the  absence  only  of  two  days  ; 
but  when  she  saw  how  eagerly  her  lover  returned  to  her,  with 
what  fresh  charm  he  listened  to  her  voice  or  her  song,  she  began 
to  confess  that  even  in  the  evil  might  be  good. 

By  degrees  he  accustomed  her  to  longer  intervals  :  and  Lucilla 
relieved  the  dreariness  of  the  time  by  the  thousand  little  plans 
and  surprises  with  which  women  delight  in  receiving  the  beloved 
wanderer  after  absence.  His  departure  was  a  signal  for  a  change 
in  the  house,  the  gardens,  the  arbor ;  and  when  she  was  tired 
with  these  occupations,  she  was  not  forbidden  at  least  to  write  to 
him  and  receive  his  letters.  Daily  intoxication  !  And  men's 
words  are  so  much  kinder  when  written,  than  they  are  when  ut- 
tered !  Fortunately  for  Lucilla,  her  early  habits,  and  her  strange 
qualities  of  mind,  rendered  her  independent  of  companionship  and 
fond  of  solitude. 

Often  Godolphin,  who  could  not  conceive  how  persons  without 


GODOLPHIN.  159 

education  could  entertain  themselves,  taking  pity  on  her  loneliness 
and  seclusion,  would  say  : 

"  But  how,  Lucilla,  have  you  passed  this  long  day,  that  I  have 
spent  away  from  you  ?  Among  the  woods  or  on  the  lake?" 

And  Lucilla,  delighted  to  recount  to  him  the  history  of  her  hours, 
would  go  over  each  incident,  and  body  forth  every  thought  that 
had  occurred  to  her,  with  a  grave  and  serious  minuteness  that 
evinced  her  capabilities  of  dispensing  with  the  world. 

In  this  manner  they  passed  somewhat  more  than  two  years ;  and, 
in  spite  of  the  human  alloy,  it  was  perhaps  the  happiest  period  of 
Godolphin's  life,  and  the  one  that  the  least  disappointed  his  too- 
exacting  imagination.  Lucilla  had  had  one  daughter,  but  she 
died  a  few  weeks  after  birth.  She  wept  over  the  perished  flower, 
but  was  not  inconsolable ;  for,  before  its  loss,  she  had  taught  her- 
self to  think  no  affliction  could  be  irremediable  that  did  not  hap- 
pen to  Godolphin.  Perhaps  Godolphin  was  the  more  grieved  of 
the  two ;  men  of  his  character  are  fond  of  the  occupation  of 
watching  the  growth  of  minds ;  they  put  in  practice  their  chi- 
meras of  education.  Happy  child  to  have  escaped  an  experiment ! 

It  was  the  eve  before  one  of  Godolphin's  periodical  excursions, 
and  it  was  Rome  that  he  proposed  to  visit ;  Godolphin  had  lin- 
gered about  the  lake  until  the  sun  had  set ;  and  Lucilla,  grown 
impatient,  went  forth  to  seek  him.  The  day  had  been  sultry,  and 
now  a  sombre  and  breathless  calm  hung  over  the  deepening  eve. 
The  pines,  those  gloomy  children  of  the  forest,  which  shed  some- 
thing of  melancholy  and  somewhat  of  sternness  over  the  brighter 
features  of  an  Italian  landscape,  drooped  heavily  in  the  breeze- 
less  air.  As  she  came  on  the  border  of  the  lake,  its  waves  lay 
dark  and  voiceless;  only  at  intervals,  the  surf,  fretting  along  the 
pebbles,  made  a  low  and  dreary  sound,  or  from  the  trees  some 
lingering  songster  sent  forth  a  shrill  and  momentary  note,  and 
then  again  all  became 

An  atmosphere  without  a  breath, 
A  silence  sleeping  there. 

There  was  a  spot  where  the  trees,  receding  in  a  ring,  left  some 
bare  and  huge  fragments  of  stone  uncovered  by  verdure.  It 
was  the  only  spot  around  that  rich  and  luxuriant  scene  that  was 
not  in  harmony  with  the  soft  spirit  of  the  place  :  might  I  indulge 
in  fanciful  comparison,  I  should  say  that  it  was  like  one  desolate 
and  gray  remembrance  in  the  midst  of  a  career  of  pleasure.  On 
this  spot  Godolphin  now  stood  alone,  looking  along  the  still  and 
purple  waters  that  lay  before  him.  Lucilla,  with  a  light  step, 


l6o  GODOLPHIN. 

climbed  the  rugged  stones,  and  touching  his  shoulder,  reproached 
him  with  a  tender  playfulness  for  his  truancy. 

"  Lucilla,"  said  he,  when  peace  was  restored,  "  what  impress- 
ions does  this  dreary  and  prophetic  pause  of  nature,  before  the 
upgathering  of  the  storm,  create  in  you  ?  Does  it  inspire  you 
with  melancholy,  or  thought,  or  fear?  " 

"  I  see  my  star,"  answered  Lucilla,  pointing  to  a  far  and  soli- 
tary orb,  which  hung  islanded  in  a  sea  of  cloud,  that  swept  slowly 
and  blackly  onward  :  "I  see  my  star,  and  I  think  more  of  that 
little  light  than  of  the  darkness  around  it." 

"  But  it  will  presently  be  buried  among  the  clouds,"  saidGod- 
olphin,  smilling  at  that  superstition  which  Lucilla  had  borrowed 
from  her  father. 

"  But  the  clouds  pass  away,  and  the  star  endures." 

"  You  are  of  a  sanguine  nature,  my  Lucilla."  Lucilla  sighed. 

"  Why  that  sigh,  dearest?  " 

"Because  I  am  thinking  how  little  even  those  who  love  us 
most,  know  of  us  !  I  never  tell  my  disquiet  and  sorrow.  There 
are  times  when  thou  wouldst  not  think  me  too  warmly  addicted 
to  hope !  " 

"  And  what,  poor  idler,  have  you  to  fear  ?" 

"Hast  thou  never  felt  it  possible  that  thou  couldst  love  me 
less?" 

"Never  !  " 

Lucilla  raised  her  large  searching  eyes,  and  gazed  eagerly  on 
his  face,  but  in  its  calm  features  and  placid  brow  she  saw  no 
ground  for  augury,  whether  propitious  or  evil.  She  turned 
away. 

"I  cannot  think,  Lucilla,"  said  Godolphin,  "that  you  evei 
direct  those  thoughts  of  yours,  wandering  although  they  be,  to 
the  future.  Do  they  ever  extend  to  the  space  of  some  ten  or 
twenty  years  ?  " 

"No.  But  one  year  may  contain  the  whole  history  of  my 
future." 

As  she  spoke,  the  clouds  gathered  together  round  the  solitary 
star  to  which  Lucilla  had  pointed.  The  storm  was  at  hand ;  they 
felt  its  approach,  and  turned  homeward. 

There  is  something  more  than  ordinarily  fearful  in  the  tempests 
that  visit  those  soft  and  garden  climes.  The  unfrequency  of  such 
violent  changes  in  the  mood  of  nature  serves  to  appal  us  as  with 
an  omen  ;  it  is  like  a  sudden  affliction  in  the  midst  of  happiness, 
or  a  wound  from  the  hand  of  one  we  love.  For  the  stroke  for 
which  we  are  not  prepared  we  have  rather  despondency  than 
resistance, 


GODOLPHIN.  l6l 

As  they  reached  their  home,  the  heavy  rain-drops  began  to  fall. 
They  stood  for  some  minutes  at  the  casement,  watching  the  cor- 
uscations of  the  lightning  as  it  played  over  the  black  and  heavy 
waters  of  the  lake.  Lucilla,  whom  the  influences  of  nature  always 
strangely  and  mysteriously  affected,  clung  pale  and  almost  trem- 
bling to  Godolphin ;  but  even  in  her  fear  there  was  delight  in 
being  so  near  to  him,  in  whose  love  alone  she  thought  there  was 
protection.  Oh !  what  luxury  so  dear  to  a  woman  as  is  the  sense 
of  dependence  !  Poor  Lucilla  !  it  was  the  last  evening  she  ever 
spent  with  one  whom  she  worshipped  so  entirely. 

Godolphin  remained  up  longer  than  Lucilla  :  when  he  joined 
her  in  her  room,  the  storm  had  ceased  ;  and  he  found  her  stand- 
ing by  the  open  window,  and  gazing  on  the  skies  that  were  now 
bright  and  serene.  Far  in  the  deep  stillness  of  midnight  crept 
the  waters  of  the  lake,  hushed  once  more  into  silence,  and  reflect- 
ing the  solemn  and  unfathomable  stars.  That  chain  of  hills, 
which  but  to  name,  awakens  countless  memories  of  romance, 
stretched  behind,  their  blue  and  dim  summits  melting  into  the 
skies ;  and  over  one,  higher  than  the  rest,  paused  the  new-risen 
moon,  silvering  the  firs  beneath,  and  farther  down,  breaking,  with 
one  long  and  yet  mellower  track  of  light,  over  the  waters  of  the 
lake. 

As  Godolphin  approached,  he  did  so  unconciously,  with  a 
hushed  and  noiseless  step.  There  is  something  in  the  quiet  of 
nature  like  worship;  it  is  as  if,  from  the  breathless  heart  of 
Things,  went  up  a  prayer  or  a  homage  to  the  Arch-Creator.  One 
feels  subdued  by  a  stillness  so  utter  and  so  august ;  it  extends 
itself  to  our  own  sensations,  and  deepens  into  an  awe. 

Both,  then,  looked  on  in  silence,  indulging  it  may  be  different 
thoughts.  At  length,  Lucilla  said  softly:  "Tell  me,  hast  thou 
really  no  faith  in  my  father's  creed ?  Are  the  stars  quite  dumb? 
Is  there  no  truth  in  their  movements,  no  prophecy  in  their 
lustre?" 

"  My  Lucilla,  reason  and  experience  tell  us  that  the  astrologers 
nurse  a  dream  that  has  no  reality." 

"  Reason  !  well  ! — Experience  ! — why,  did  not  thy  father's 
mortal  illness  hurry  thee  from  home  at  the  very  time  in  which 
mine  foretold  thy  departure  and  its  cause?  I  was  then  but  a 
child ;  yet  I  shall  never  forget  the  paleness  of  thy  cheek  when 
my  father  uttered  his  prediction." 

"  I,  too,  was  almost  a  child  then.  Lucilla." 

"  But  that  prediction  was  verified?  " 

'•'It  was  so;  but  how  many  did  Volktman  utter  that  were 
n 


162  GODOLPHIN. 

never  verified  ?  In  true  science  there  are  no  chances — no  uncer- 
tainties." 

"And  my  father,"  said  Lucilla,  unheeding  the  answer, 
"  always  foretold  that  thy  lot  and  mine  were  to  be  entwined." 

"And  the  prophecy,  perhaps,  disposed  you  to  the  fact.  You 
mieht  never  have  loved  me,  Lucilla,  if  your  thoughts  had  not 
been  driven  to  dwell  upon  me  by  the  prediction." 

"  Nay  ;  I  thought  of  thee  before  I  heard  the  prophecy." 

'"But  your  father  foretold  me,  dearest,  cross  and  disappoint- 
ment in  my  love — was  he  not  wrong?  Am  I  not  blest  with 
you ! ' ' 

Lucilla  threw  herself  into  her  lover's  arms,  and,  as  she  kissed 
him,  murmured  :  "Ah,  if  I  <:0a/</make  thee  happy  !  " 

The  next  day,  Godolphin  departed  for  Rome.  Lucilla  was 
more  dejected  at  his  departure  than  she  had  been  even  in  his 
earliest  absence.  The  winter  was  now  slowly  approaching,  and 
the  weather  was  cold  and  dreary.  That  year  it  was  unusually 
rainy  and  tempestuous,  and  as  the  wild  gusts  howled  around  her 
solitary  home — how  solitary  now ! — or  she  heard  the  big  drops 
hurrying  down  on  the  agitated  lake,  she  shuddered  at  her  own 
despondent  thoughts,  and  dreaded  the  gloom  and  loneliness  of 
the  lengthened  night.  For  the  first  time  since  she  had  lived 
with  Godolphin  she  turned,  but  disconsolately,  to  the  company 
of  books. 

Works  of  all  sorts  filled  their  home,  but  the  spell  that  once 
spoke  to  her  from  the  page  was  broken.  If  the  book  was  not  of 
love,  it  possessed  no  interest ;  if  of  love,  she  thought  the  descrip- 
tion both  tame  and  false.  No  one  ever  painted  love  so  as  fully  to 
satisfy  another,  to  some  it  is  too  florid,  to  some  too  common- 
place ;  the  god,  like  other  gods,  has  no  likeness  on  earth ;  and 
every  wave  on  which  the  star  of  passion  beams,  breaks  the  lustre 
into  different  refractions  of  light. 

As  one  day  she  was  turning  listlessly  over  some  books  that  had 
been  put  aside  by  Godolphin  in  a  closet,  and  hoping  to  find  one 
that  contained,  as  sometimes  happened,  his  comments,  or  at  least 
his  marks,  she  was  somewhat  startled  to  find  among  them  several 
volumes  which  she  remembered  to  have  belonged  to  her  father. 
Godolphin  had  bought  them  after  Volktman's  death,  and  put 
them  by  as  relics  of  his  singular  friend,  and  as  samples  of  the 
laborious  and  self-willed  aberration  of  the  human  intellect. 

Few  among  these  works  could  Lucilla  comprehend,  for  they  were 
chiefly  in  other  tongues  than  the  only  two  with  which  she  was 
acquainted.  But  some,  among  which  were  manuscripts  by  her 
father,  beautifully  written,  and  curiously  ornamented  (some  of 


GODOLPHIN.  163 

the  chief  works  on  the  vainer  sciences  are  only  to  be  found  in 
manuscripts),. she  could  contrive  to  decipher  by  a  little  assistance 
from  her  memory,  in  recalling  the  signs  and  hieroglyphics  which 
her  father  had  often  explained  to  her,  and,  indeed,  caused  her  to 
copy  out  for  him  in  his  calculations.  Always  possessing  an  un- 
taxed  and  unquestioned  belief  in  the  astral  powers,  she  now  took 
some  interest  in  reading  of  their  mysteries.  Her  father,  secretly, 
perhaps,  hoping  to  bequeath  his  name  to  the  gratitude  of  some 
future  Hermes,  had  in  his  manuscripts  reduced  into  a  system  many 
scattered  theories  of  others,  and  many  dogmas  of  his  own.  Over 
these,  for  they  were  simpler  and  easier  than  the  crabbed  and  mys- 
tical speculations  in  the  printed  books,  she  more  especially  pored ; 
and  she  was  not  sorry  at  finding  fresh  reasons  for  her  untutored 
adoration  of  the  stars  and  apparitions  of  the  heavens. 

Still,  however,  these  bewildering  researches  made  but  a  small 
part,  comparatively  speaking,  of  the  occupation  of  her  thoughts. 
To  write  to,  and  hear  from,  Godolphin,  had  become  to  her  more 
necessary  than  ever,  and  her  letters  were  fuller  and  more  minute 
in  their  details  of  love  than  even  in  the  period  of  their  first  pas- 
sion. VVouldest  thou  know,  if  the  woman  thou  lovest  still  loves 
thee,  trust  not  her  spoken  words,  her  present  smiles ;  examine 
her  letters  in  absence ;  see  if  she  dwells,  as  she  once  did,  upon 
trifles — but  trifles  relating  to  thee.  The  things  which  the  indiffer- 
ent forget  are  among  the  most  treasured  meditations  of  love. 

But  Lucilla  was  not  satisfied  with  the  letters — frequent  as  they 
were — that  she  received  in  answer ;  they  were  kind,  affectionate, 
but  the  something  was  wanting.  "The  best  part  of  beauty  is  that 
which  no  picture  can  express."  That  which  the  heart  most  asks, 
is  that  which  no  words  can  convey.  Honesty,  patriotism,  religion 
— these  have  had  their  hypocrites  for  life ;  but  passion  permits 
only  momentary  dissemblers. 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 

GODOLPHIN  AT  ROME. — THE  CURE  FOR  A  MORBID  IDEALISM. — HIS 
EMBARRASSMENT  IN  REGARD  TO  LUCILLA. — THE  RENCONTRE  WITH 
AN  OLD  FRIEND. — THE  COLISEUM. A  SURPRISE. 

GODOLPHIN  arrived  at  Rome  :  it  was  thronged  with  English. 
Among  them  were  some  whom  he  remembered  with  esteem  in 
England.  He  had  grown  a  little  weary  of  his  long  solitude,  and 
he  entered  with  eagerness  into  the  society  of  those  who  courted 
him.  He  was  still  an  object  of  great  interest  to  the  idle  ;  and  as 
men  grow  older,  they  become  .less  able  to  dispense  with  attention. 


164  GODOLPHIN. 

He  was  pleased  to  find  his  own  importance,  and  he  tasted  the 
sweets  of  companionship  with  more  gust  than  he  had  yet  done.  His 
talents,  buried  in  obscurity,  and  uncalled  forth  by  the  society  of 
Lucilla,  were  now  perpetually  tempted  into  action,  and  stimulated 
by  reward.  It  had  never  before  appeared  to  him  so  charming  a 
thing  to  shine ;  for,  before,  he  had  been  sated  with  even  that 
pleasure.  Now,  from  long  relaxation,  it  had  become  new  ;  vanity 
had  recovered  its  nice  perception.  He  was  no  longer  so  absorbed  as  he 
had  been  by  visionary  images.  He  had  given  his  fancy  food  in 
his  long  solitude,  and  with  its  wild  co-mate  ;  and  being  somewhat 
disappointed  in  the  result,  the  living  world  became  to  him  a  fairer 
prospect  than  it  had  seemed  while  the  world  of  imagination  was 
untried.  Nothing  more  confirms  the  health  of  the  mind  than  in- 
dulging its  favorite  infirmity  to  its  own  cure.  So  Goethe,  in  his 
memoirs,  speaking  of  Werther,  remarks,  that  "  the  composition 
of  that  extravagant  work  cured  his  character  of  extravagance." 

Godolphin  thought  often  of  Lucilla;  but  perhaps,  if  the  truth 
of  his  heart  were  known  even  to  himself,  a  certain  sentiment  of 
pain  and  humiliation  was  associated  with  the  tenderness  of  his  re- 
membrance. With  her  he  had  led  a  life,  romantic  it  is  true,  but 
somewhat  effeminate ;  and  he  thought  now,  surrounded  by  the 
gay  and  freshening  tide  of  the  world,  somewhat  mawkish  in  its 
romance.  He  did  not  experience  a  desire  to  return  to  the  still 
lake  and  the  gloomy  pines ;  he  felt  that  Lucilla  did  not  suffice  to 
make  his  world.  He  would  have  wished  to  bring  her  to  Rome ; 
to  live  with  her  more  in  public  than  he  had  hitherto  done  ;  to 
conjoin,  in  short,  her  society,  with  the  more  recreative  dissipation 
of  the  world  :  but  there  were  many  obstacles  to  this  plan  in  his  fas- 
tidious imagination.  So  new  to  the  world,  its  ways,  itsfashioHS  ; 
so  strange  and  infantine  in  all  things,  as  Lucilla  was,  he  trembled 
to  expose  her  inexperience  to  the  dangers  that  would  beset  it. 
He  knew  that  his  "  friends  "  would  pay  very  little  respect  to  her 
reserve  ;  and  that  for  one  so  lovely  and  unhackneyed,  the  snares 
of  the  wildest  and  most  subtle  adepts  of  intrigue  would  be  set. 
Godolphin  did  not  undervalue  Lucilla's  pure  and  devoted  heart ; 
but  he  knew  that  the  only  sure  antidote  against  the  dangers  of  the 
world  is  the  knowledge  of  the  world.  There  was  nothing  in  Lu- 
cilla that  ever  promised  to  attain  that  knowledge  ;  her  very  nature 
seemed  to  depend  on  her  ignorance  of  the  nature  of  others.  Joined 
to  this  fear  and  a  confused  sentiment  of  delicacy  towards  her,  a 
certain  remorseful  feeling  in  himself  made  him  dislike  bringing 
their  connection  immediately  before  the  curious  and  malignant 
world  :  so  much  had  circumstance,  and  Lucilla's  own  self-willed 
ternpjr  and  uncalculating  love,  contributed  to  drive  the  poor  girl 


GODOLPH1N.  165 

into  his  arms,  and  so  truly  had  he  chosen  the  generous,  not  the 
selfish  part,  until  passion  and  nature  were  exposed  to  a  tempta- 
tion that  could  have  been  withstood  by  none  but  the  adherent  to 
sterner  principles  than  he  (the  creature  of  indolence  and  feeling) 
had  ever  clung  to — Godolphin,  viewing  his  habits,  his  education, 
his  whole  bias  and  frame  of  mind,  the  estimates  and  customs  of 
the  world,  may  not,  perhaps,  be  very  rigidly  judged  for  the  na- 
ture of  his  ties  to  Lucilla.  But  I  do  not  seek  to  excuse  it,  nor 
did  he  wholly  excuse  it  to  himself.  The  image  of  Volktman 
often  occurred  to  him,  and  always  in  reproach.  Living  with  Lu- 
cilla in  a  spot  only  trod  by  Italians,  so  indulgent  to  love,  and 
where  the  whisper  of  shame  could  never  reach  her  ear,  or  awaken 
his  remorse,  her  state  did  not,  however,  seem  to  her  or  himself 
degraded,  and  the  purity  of  her  girlish  mind  almost  forbade  the 
intrusion  of  the  idea.  But  to  bring  her  into  public — among  his 
own  countrymen — and  to  feel  that  the  generous  and  devoted 
girl,  now  so  unconscious  of  sin,  would  be  rated  by  English  eyes 
with  the  basest  and  most  abandoned  of  the  sex ;  with  the  glori- 
fiers  in  vice  or  the  hypocrites  for  money — this  was  a  thought 
which  he  could  not  contemplate,  and  which  he  felt  he  would 
rather  pass  his  life  in  solitude  than  endure.  But  this  very  feeling 
gave  an  embarrassment  to  his  situation  with  Lucilla,  and  yet 
more  fixedly  combined  her  image  with  that  of  a  wearisome  se- 
clusion and  an  eternal  ennui. 

From  the  thought  of  Lucilla,  coupled  with  its  many  embarass- 
ments,  Godolphin  turned  with  avidity  to  the  easy  enjoyments  of 
life  :  enjoyments  that  ask  no  care  and  dispense  with  the  trouble 
of  reflection. 

But  among  the  visitors  to  Rome,  the  one  whose  sight  gave  to 
Godolphin  the  greatest  pleasure  was  his  old  friend  Augustus 
Saville.  A  decaying  constitution,  and  a  pulmonary  attack  in  es- 
pecial, had  driven  the  accomplished  voluptuary  to  a  warmer  cli- 
mate. The  meeting  of  the  two  friends  was  quite  characteristic  : 
it  was  at  a  soiree  at  an  English  house.  Saville  had  managed  to 
get  up  a  whist-table. 

"  Look,  Saville,  there  is  Godolphin,  your  old  friend  !  "  cried 
the  host,  who  was  looking  on  the  game,  and  waiting  to  cut  in. 

"  Hist !  "  said  Saville;  "don't  direct  his  attention  to  me  until 
after  the  odd  trick  !" 

Notwithstanding  this  coolness  when  a  point  was  in  question, 
Saville  was  extremely  glad  to  meet  his  former  pupil.  They  retired 
into  a  corner  of  the  room,  and  talked  over  the  world.  Godolphin 
hastened  to  turn  the  conversation  on  Lady  Erpingham. 

"  Ah  !  "  said  Saville,  "  I  see  from  your  questions,  and  yet  more 


1 66  GODOLPH1N. 

your  tone  of  voice,  that  although  it  is  now  several  years  since  you 
met,  you  still  preserve  the  sentiment — the  weakness — Ah  ! 
—bah  !  " 

"Pshaw!"  said  Godolphin;  "  I  owe  her  revenge,  not  love. 
But  Erpingham  ?  Does  she  love  him?  He  is  handsome." 

"Erpingham?  What — you  have  not  heard — " 

"  Heard  what?" 

"Oh,  nothing:  but,  pardon  me,  they  wait  for  me  at  the  card- 
table.  I  should  like  to  stay  with  you,  but  you  know  one  must  not  be 
selfish ;  the  table  would  be  broken  up  without  me.  No  virtue 
without  self-sacrifice — eh  ?  " 

"But  one  moment.  What  is  the  matter  with  the  Erpinghams? 
have  they  quarreled?  " 

"Quarrelled? — bah!  Quarrelled — no;  I  dare  say  she  likes 
him  better  now  than  ever  she  did  before."  And  Saville  limped 
away  to  the  table. 

Godolphin  remained  for  some  time  abstracted  and  thoughtful. 
At  length,  just  as  he  was  going  away,  Saville,  who,  having  an 
unplayable  hand  and  a  bad  partner,  had  somewhat  lost  his  inter- 
est in  the  game,  looked  up  and  beckoned  to  him. 

"  Godolphin,  my  dear  fellow,  I  am  to  escort  a  lady  to  see  the 
lions  to-morrow ;  a  widow — a  rich  widow  ;  handsome,  too.  Do, 
for  charity's  sake,  accompany  us,  or  meet  us  at  the  Coliseum. 
How  well  that  sounds — eh  ?  About  two." 

Godolphin  refused  at  first,  but  being  pressed,  assented. 

Not  surrounded  by  the  lesser  glories  of  modern  Rome,  but  girt 
with  the  mighty  desolation  of  the  old  City  of  Romulus,  stands 
the  most  wonderful  monument,  perhaps,  in  the  world,  of  imper- 
ial magnificence — the  Flavian  Amphitheatre,  to  which,  it  has 
been  believed,  the  colossal  statue  of  the  worst  of  emperors  gave 
that  name  (the  Coliseum),  allied  with  the  least  ennobling  remem- 
brances, yet  giving  food  to  the  loftiest  thoughts.  The  least 
ennobling  remembrances;  for  what  can  be  more  degrading  than 
the  amusements  of  a  degraded  people,  who  reserved  meekness  for 
their  tyrants,  and  lavished  ferocity  on  their  shows  ?  From  that 
of  the  wild  beast  to  that  of  the  Christian  martyr,  blood  has  been 
the  only  sanctification  of  this  temple  to  the  Arts.  The  history  of 
the  Past  broods  like  an  air  over  those  mighty  arches;  but  Mem- 
ory can  find  no  reminiscence  worthy  of  the  spot.  The  amphi- 
theatre was  not  built  until  history  had  become  a  record  of  the 
vice  and  debasement  of  the  human  race.  The  Faun  and  the 
Dryad  had  deserted  the  earth  ;  no  sweet  superstition,  the  faith  of 
the  grotto  and  the  green  hill,  could  stamp  with  a  delicate  and 
undying  spell  the  labors  of  man.  Nor  could  the  ruder  but 


GODOLPHIN.  167 

august  virtues  of  the  heroic  age  give  to  the  tradition  of  the  arch 
and  column  some  stirring  remembrance  or  exalting  thought.  Not 
only  the  warmth  of  fancy,  but  the  greatness  of  soul  was  gone  : 
the  only  triumph  left  to  genius  was  to  fix  on  its  page  the  gloomy 
vices  which  make  the  annals  of  the  world.  Tacitus  is  the  His- 
torian of  the  Coliseum.  But  the  very  darkness  of  the  past  gives 
to  the  thoughts  excited  within  that  immense  pile  a  lofty  but 
mournful  character.  A  sense  of  vastness,  for  which,  as  we  gaze, 
we  cannot  find  words,  but  which  bequeaths  thoughts  that  our 
higher  faculties  would  not  willingly  forego,  creeps  within  us  as 
we  gaze  on  this  Titan  relic  of  gigantic  crimes  forever  passed 
away  from  the  world. 

And  not  only  within  the  scene,  but  around  the  scene,  what 
voices  of  old  float  upon  the  air  !  Yonder  the  triumphal  arch  of 
Constantine,  its  Corinthian  arcades,  and  the  history  of  Trajan 
sculptured  upon  its  marble ;  the  dark  and  gloomy  verdure  of  the 
Palatine ;  the  ruins  of  the  Palace  of  the  Caesars ;•  the  Mount 
of  Fable,  of  Fame,  of  Luxury  (the  Three  Epochs  of  Na- 
tions) ;  the  habitation  of  Saturn;  the  home  of  Tully;  the 
site  of  the  Golden  House  of  Nero !  Look  at  your  feet, — 
look  around ;  the  waving  weed,  the  broken  column — Time's 
witness,  and  the  Earthquake's.  In  that  contrast  between 
grandeur  and  decay;  in  the  unutterable  and  awful  solemnity 
that,  while  rife  with  the  records  of  past  ages,  is  sad  also  with 
their  ravage,  you  have  felt  the  nature  of  eternity ! 

Through  this  vast  amphitheatre,  and  giving  way  to  such  medi- 
tations, Godolphin  passed  on  alone,  the  day  after  his  meeting 
with  Saville ;  and  at  the  hour  he  had  promised  the  latter  to  seek 
him,  he  mounted  the  wooden  staircase  which  conducts  the 
stranger  to  the  wonders  above  the  arena,  and  by  one  of  the 
arches  that  looked  over  the  still  pines  that  slept  afar  off  in  the 
sun  of  noon,  he  saw  a  female  in  deep  mourning,  whom  Saville 
appeared  to  be  addressing.  He  joined  them ;  the  female  turned 
round,  and  he  beheld,  pale  and  saddened,  but  how  glorious 
still,  the  face  of  Constance ! 

To  him  the  interview  was  unexpected,  by  her  foreseen.  The 
color  flushed  over  her  cheek,  the  voice  sank  inaudible  within. 
But  Godolphin's  emotion  was  more  powerful  and  uncontrolled  : 
violent  tremblings  literally  shook  him  as  he  stood:  he  gasped  for 
breath  :  the  sight  of  the  dead  returned  to  earth  would  have 
affected  him  less. 

In  this  immense  ruin — in  the  spot  where,  most  of  earth,  man 
feels  the  insignificance  of  an  individual  life,  or  of  the  rapid  years 
over  which  it  extends — he  had  encountered,  suddenly,  the  being 


1 68  GODOLPH/N. 

who  had  colored  all  his  existence.  He  was  reminded  at  once  of 
the  grand  epoch  of  his  life,  and  of  its  utter  unimportance.  But 
these  are  the  thoughts  that  would  occur  rather  to  us  than  him. 
Thought  at  that  moment  was  an  intolerable  flash  that  burst  on 
him  for  an  instant,  and  then  left  all  in  darkness.  He  clung  to 
the  shattered  corridor  for  support.  Constance  seemed  touched 
and  surprised  by  so  overwhelming  an  emotion,  and  the  habitual 
hypocrisy  in  which  women  are  reared,  and  by  which  they  learn 
to  conceal  the  sentiments  they  experience,  and  affect  those  they 
do  not,  came  to  her  assistance  and  his  own. 

"It  is  many  years,  Mr.  Godolphin,"  said  she  in  a  collected 
but  soft  voice,  "  since  we  met." 

"Years!"  repeated  Godolphin,  vaguely;  and  approaching 
her  with  a  slow  and  faltering  step.  "  Years  !  you  have  not  num- 
bered them  !  " 

Saville  had  retired  a  few  steps  on  Godolphin's  arrival,  and  had 
watched  with  a  sardonic  yet  indifferent  smile  the  proof  of  his 
friend's  weakness.  He  now  joined  Godolphin,  and  said  : 

"You  must  forgive  me,  my  dear  Godolphin,  for  not  apprising 
you  before  of  Lady  Erpingham's  arrival  at  Rome.  But  a  delight 
is  perhaps  the  greater  for  being  sudden." 

The  word  Erpingham  thrilled  displeasingly  through  Godolphin's 
veins ;  in  some  measure  it  restored  him  to  himself.  He  bowed 
coldly,  and  muttered  a  few  ceremonious  words ;  and  while  he 
was  yet  speaking,  some  stragglers  that  had  belonged  to  Lady  Erp- 
ingham's party  came  up.  Fortunately,  perhaps,  for  the  self-pos- 
session of  both,  they,  the  once  lovers,  were  separated  from  each 
other.  But  whenever  Constance  turned  her  glance  to  Godolphin; 
she  saw  those  large,  searching,  melancholy  eyes,  whose  power  she 
well  recalled,  fixed  unmovingly  on  her,  as  seeking  to  read  in  her 
cheek  the  history  of  the  years  which  had  ripened  its  beauties — for 
another ! 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

DIALOGUE  BETWEEN  GODOLPHIN  AND  SAVILLE. — CERTAIN  EVENTS 
EXPLAINED. — SAVILLE'S  APOLOGY  FOR  A  BAD  HEART. — GODOL- 
PHIN'S CONFUSED  SENTIMENTS  FOR  LADY  ERPINGHAM. 

' '  GOOD  Heavens  !     Constance  Vernon  once  more  free  ! ' ' 

' '  And  did  you  not  really  know  it !     Your  retreat  by  the  lake 

must  have  been  indeed  seclusion.     It  is  seven  months  since  Lord 

Erpingham  died." 


GODOLPHIN.  169 

"  Do  I  dream  !  "  murmured  Godolphin,  as  he  strode  hurriedly 
to  and  fro  the  apartment  of  his  friend. 

Saville,  stretched  on  the  sofa,  diverted  himself  with  mixing 
snuffs  on  a  little  table  beside  him.  Nothing  is  so  mournfully 
amusing  in  life  as  to  see  what  trifles  the  most  striking  occurrences 
to  us  appear  to  our  friends. 

"  But,"  said  Saville  not  looking  up,  "  you  seem  very  incuri- 
ous to  know  how  he  died,  and  where?  You  must  learn  that  Er- 
pingham  had  two  ruling  passions — one  for  horses,  the  other  for  fid- 
dlers. In  setting  off  for  Italy  he  expected,  naturally  enough,  to 
find  the  latter,  but  he  thought  he  might  as  well  export  the  former. 
He  accordingly  filled  the  vessel  with  quadrupeds,  and  the  second 
day  after  landing  he  diverted  the  tedium  of  a  foreign  clime  with 
a  gentle  ride.  He  met  with  a  fall,  and  was  brought  home  speech- 
less. The  loss  of  speech  was  not  of  great  importance  to  his  ac- 
quaintance ;  but  he  died  that  night,  and  the  loss  of  his  life  was  ! 
— for  he  gave  very  fair  dinners — ah, — bah!"  And  Saville 
inhaled  the  fragrance  of  a  new  mixture. 

Saville  had  a  very  pleasant  way  of  telling  a  story,  particularly 
if  it  related  to  a  friend's  death,  or  some  such  agreeable  incident. 
"Poor  Lady  Erpingham  was  exceedingly  shocked;  and  well  she 
might  be,  for  I  don't  think  weeds  become  her.  She  came  here 
by  slow  stages,  in  order  that  the  illustrious  Dead  might  chase 
away  the  remembrance  of  the  deceased." 

"Your  heart  has  not  improved,  Saville." 

"Heart!  What's  that?  O,  a  thing  servant-maids  have,  and 
break  for  John  the  footman.  Heart !  My  dear  fellow,  you  are 
turned  canter,  and  make  use  of  words  without  meaning." 

Godolphin  was  not  prepared  for  a  conversation  of  this  order ; 
and  Saville,  in  somewhat  a  more  serious  air,  continued  :  "  Every 
person,  Godolphin,  talks  about  the  world  !  The  warld  !  It  con- 
veys different  meanings  to  each,  according  to  the  nature  of  that 
circle  which  makes  his  world.  But  we  all  agree  in  one  thing, — 
the  worldliness  of  the  world.  Now,  no  man's  world  is  so  void  of 
affection  as  our's — the  polished,  the  c6urtly,  the  great  world  : 
the  higher  the  air,  the  more  pernicious  to  vegetation.  Our  very 
charm,  our  very  fascination,  depends  upon  a  certain  mockery;  a 
subtle  and  fine  ridicule  on  all  persons  and  all  things  constitutes 
the  essence  of  our  conversation.  Judge  if  that  tone  be  friendly  to 
the  seriousness  of  the  affections.  Some  poor  dog  among  us  mar- 
ries, and  household  plebeianisms  corrupt  the  most  refined.  Cus- 
tom attaches  the  creature  to  his  ugly  wife  and  his  squalling  chil- 
dren ;  he  grows  affectionate,  and  becomes  out  of  fashion.  But 
we  single  men,  dear  Godolphin,  have  no  one  to  care  for  but  our- 


170  GODOLPHIN. 

selves  :  the  deaths  that  happen,  unlike  the  ties  that  fall  from  the 
married  man,  do  not  interfere  with  our  domestic  comforts.  We 
miss  no  one  to  make  our  tea,  or  give  us  our  appetite-pills  before 
dinner.  Our  losses  are  not  intimate  and  household.  We  shrug 
our  shoulders,  and  are  not  a  whit  the  worse  for  them.  Thus,  for 
want  of  grieving,  and  caring,  and  fretting,  we  are  happy  enough 
to  grow — come,  I  will  use  an  epithet  to  please  you — hard-hearted  ! 
We  congeal  into  philosophy;  and  are  we  not  then  wise  in  adopt- 
ing this  life  of  isolation  and  indifference?  " 

Godolphin,  wrapt  in  reflection,  scarcely  heeded  the  voluptuary, 
but  Saville  continued  :  he  had  grown  to  that  height  in  loneliness, 
that  he  even  loved  talking  to  himself. 

"Yes,  wise  !  For  this  world  is  so  filled  with  the  selfish,  that 
he  who  is  not  so  labors  under  a  disadvantage.  Nor  are  we  the 
worse  for  our  apathy.  If  we  jest  at  a  man's  misfortune,  we  do 
not  do  it  to  his  face.  Why  not  out  of  the  ill,  which  is  misfor- 
tune, extract  good,  which  is  amusement?  Three  men  in  thisroom 
are  made  cheerful  by  a  jest  at  a  broken  leg  in  the  next :  Is  the 
broken  leg  the  worse  for  it  ?  No ;  but  the  three  men  are  made 
merry  by  the  jest :  Is  the  jest  wicked,  then  ?  Nay,  it  is  a  benevo- 
lence. But  some  cry,  '  Ay,  but  this  habit  of  disregarding  misfor- 
tunes blunts  your  wills  when  you  have  the  power  to  relieve  them, 
Relieve  !  Was  evei  such  delusion  ?  What  can  we  relieve  in  the  vast 
mass  of  human  misfortunes?  As  well  might  we  take  a  drop  from 
the  ocean,  and  cry,  '  Ha,  ha  !  we  have  lessened  the  sea  ! '  What 
are  even  your  public  charities?  What  your  best  institutions?  How 
few  of  the  multitude  are  relieved  at  all  ;  how  few  of  that  few  re- 
lieved permanently  !  Men  die,  suffer,  starve  just  as  soon,  and  just 
as  numerously  ;  these  public  institutions  are  only  trees  for  the 
public  conscience  to  go  to  roost  upon.  No,  my  dear  fellow,  every- 
thing I  see  in  the  world  says,  Take  care  of  thyself.  This  is  the 
true  moral  of  life ;  every  one  who  minds  it  gets  on,  thrives,  and 
fattens;  they  who  don't,  come  to  us  to  borrow  money,  if  gentle- 
men; or  fall  upon  the  parish,  if  plebeians,  /mind  it,  my  dear 
Godolphin  ;  I  have  named  it  all  my  life;  I  am  very  contented — 
content  is  the  sign  of  virtue, — ah, — bah  !  " 

Yes  ;  Constance  was  a  widow.  The  hand  of  her  whom  Percy 
Godolphin  had  loved  so  passionately,  and  whose  voice  even  now 
thrilled  to  his  inmost  heart,  and  awakened  the  echoes  that  had 
slept  for  years,  it  was  once  more  within  her  power  to  bestow,  and 
within  his  to  demand.  What  a  host  of  emotions  this  thought 
gave  birth  to !  Like  the  coming  of  the  Hindoo  god  she  had  ap- 
peared, and  lo,  there  was  a  new  world  !  "And  her  look,"  he 
thought,  ( '  was  kind,  her  voice  full  of  a  gentle  promise,  her  agita- 


GODOLPHIN.  iyi 

tion  was  visible.  She  loves  me  still.  Shall  I  fly  to  her  feet  ?  Shall 
I  press  for  hope  ?  And,  oh  !  what,  what  happiness ! — but 
Ludlla!" 

This  recollection  was  indeed  a  barrier  that  never  failed  to  pre- 
sent itself  to  every  prospect  of  hope  and  joy  which  the  image  of 
Constance  colored  and  called  forth.  Even  for  the  object  of  his 
first  love,  could  he  desert  one  who  had  forsaken  all  for  him, 
whose  life  was  wrapt  up  in  his  affection  ?  The  very  coolness  with 
which  he  was  sensible  he  had  returned  the  attachment  of  this  poor 
girl,  made  him  more  alive  to  the  duties  he  owed  her.  If  not 
bound  to  her  by  marriage,  he  considered  with  a  generosity — 
barely,  in  truth,  but  justice,  yet  how  rare  in  the  world — that  the 
tie  between  them  was  sacred ;  that  only  death  could  dissolve  it. 
And  now  that  tie  was,  perhaps,  all  that  held  him  from  attaining 
the  dream  of  his  past  life. 

Absorbed  in  these  ideas,  Godolphin  contrived  to  let  Saville's 
unsympathizing  discourse  glide  unheeded  along,  without  reflect- 
ing its  images  on  the  sense,  until  the  name  of  Lady  Erpingham 
again  awakened  his  attention. 

"  You  are  going  to  her  this  evening,"  said  Saville;  "and  you 
may  thank  me  for  that ;  for  I  asked  you  if  you  were  thither  bound 
in  her  hearing,  in  order  to  force  her  into  granting  you  an  invita- 
tion. She  only  sees  her  most  intimate  friends — you,  me,  and 
Lady  Charlotte  Deerham.  Widows  are  shy  of  acquaintance  dur- 
ing their  first  affliction.  I  always  manage  however,  to  be  among 
the  admitted — caustic  is  good  for  some  wounds." 

"  Nay,"  said  Godolphin,  smiling,  "  it  is  your  friendly  disposi- 
tion that  makes  them  sure  of  sympathy." 

"You  have  hit  it.  But,"  continued  Saville,  "do  you  think 
Madame  likely  to  marry  again,  or  shall  you  yourself  adventure  ? 
Erpingham  has  left  her  nearly  his  whole  fortune." 

Irritated  and  impatient  at  Saville's  tone,  Godolphin  rose. 
"  Between  you  and  me,"  said  Saville,  in  wishing  him  good-by,  "  I 
don't  think  she  will  ever  marry  again.  Lady  Erpingham  is  fond 
of  power  and  liberty ;  even  the  young  Godolphin — and  you  are 
not  so  handsome  as  you  were — will  find  it  a  hopeless  suit." 

"  Pshaw  !  "  muttered  Godolphin,  as  he  departed.  But  the  last 
words  of  Saville  had  created  a  new  feeling  in  his  breast.  It  was 
then  possible,  nay,  highly  probable,  that  he  might  have  spared 
himself  the  contest  he  had  undergone,  and  that  the  choice 
between  Lucilla  and  Constance  might  never  be  permitted  him. 
"At  all  events,"  said  he,  almost  aloud,  "  I  will  see  if  this  con- 
jecture be  true  :  if  Constance,  yet  remembering  our  early  love, 
yet  feeling  for  .the  years  of  secret  pining  which  her  ambition  be/. 


172  GODOLPHIN. 

queathed  me,  should  appear  willing  to  grant  me  the  atonement 
fate  has  placed  within  her  power,  then,  then  it  will  be  time  for 
this  self-sacrifice." 

The  social  relations  of  the  sex  often  make  men  villanous — they 
more  often  make  them  weak. 

CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

AN  EVENING  WITH  CONSTANCE. 

CONSTANCE'S  heart  was  in  her  eyes  when  she  saw  Godolphin 
that  evening.  She  had,  it  is  true,  as  Saville  observed,  been  com- 
pelled by  common  courtesy  to  invite  him ;  and  although  there  was 
no  embarrassment  in  their  meeting,  who  shall  imagine  that  it  did 
not  bring  to  Constance  more  of  pleasure  than  pain  ?  She  had 
been  deeply  shocked  by  Lord  Erpingham's  sudden  death :  they 
had  not  been  congenial  minds,  but  the  great  have  an  advantage 
denied  to  the  less  wealthy  orders.  Among  the  former,  a  husband 
and  wife  need  not  weary  each  other  with  constant  companion- 
ships; different  establishments,  different  hours,  different  pursuits, 
allow  them  to  pass  life  in  great  measure  apart,  so  that  there  is  no 
necessity  for  hatred,  and  indifference  is  the  coldest  feeling  which 
custom  induces. 

Still  in  the  prime  of  youth,  and  at  the  zenith  of  her  beauty, 
Constance  was  now  independent.  She  was  in  the  enjoyment  of 
the  wealth  and  rank  her  early  habits  of  thought  had  deemed 
indispensable,  and  she  now  for  the  first  time  possessed  the  power 
of  sharing  them  with  whom  she  pleased.  At  this  thought  how 
naturally  her  heart  flew  back  to  Godolphin  ?  And  while  she  now 
gazed,  although  by  stealth,  at  his  countenance,  as  he  sat  at  a  lit- 
tle distance  from  her,  and  in  his  turn  watched  for  the  tokens  of 
past  remembrance,  she  was  deeply  touched  by  the  change  (light 
as  it  seemed  to  others)  which  years  had  brought  to  him ;  and  in 
recalling  the  emotion  he  had  testified  at  meeting  her,  she  suffered 
her  heart  to  soften,  while  it  reproached  her  in  whispering,  "Thou 
art  the  cause  !  "  All  the  fire,  the  ardor  of  a  character  not  then 
confirmed,  which,  when  she  last  saw  him,  spoke  in  his  eye  and 
mien,  were  gone  forever.  The  irregular  brilliancy  of  his  conver- 
sation, the  earnestness  of  his  air  and  gesture,  were  replaced  by  a 
calm,  an  even,  and  melancholy  composure.  His  forehead  was 
stamped  with  the  lines  of  thought ;  and  the  hair,  grown  thinner 
towards  the  temples,  no  longer  concealed  by  its  luxuriance  the 
pale  expanse  of  his  brow.  The  air  of  delicate  health  which  had 
at  Hrsi  interested  her  in  his  appearance,  still  lingered,  and  gave 


GODOLPHIN.  173 

its  wonted  and  ineffable  charm  to  his  low  voice,  and  the  gentle 
expression  of  his  eyes.  By  degrees,  the  conversation,  at  first  par- 
tial and  scattered,  became  more  general.  Constance  and  Godol- 
phin  were  drawn  into  it. 

"It  is  impossible,"  said  Godolphin,  "to  compare  life  in  a 
southern  climate  with  that  which  we  lead  in  colder  countries. 
There  is  an  indolence,  a  laissez  alter,  a  philosophical  insouciance, 
produced  by  living  under  these  warm  suns,  and  apart  from 
the  ambition  of  the  objects  of  our  own  nation,  which  produce  at 
last  a  state  of  mind  that  divides  us  forever  from  our  countrymen. 
It  is  like  living  amidst  perpetual  music — a  different  kind  of  life — 
a  soft,  lazy,  voluptuous  romance  of  feeling,  that  indisposes  us  to 
action,  almost  to  motion.  So  far  from  a  sojourn  in  Italy  being 
friendly  to  the  growth  of  ambition,  it  nips  and  almost  destroys 
the  germ." 

''In  fact,  it  leaves  us  fit  for  nothing  but  love,"  said  Saville  ; 
"  an  occupation  that  levels  us  with  the  silliest  part  of  our  species." 

"  Fools  cannot  love,"  said  Lady  Charlotte. 

' '  Pardon  me,  love  and  folly  are  synonymous  in  more  languages 
than  the  French,"  answered  Saville. 

"In  truth,"  said  Godolphin,  "  the  love  which  you  both  allude 
to  is  not  worth  disputing  about." 

"What  love- is?"  asked  Saville. 

"First  love,"  cried  Lady  Charlotte;  "is  it  not,  Mr.  Godol- 
phin?" 

Godolphin  changed  color,  and  his  eyes  met  those  of  Constance. 
She  too  sighed  and  looked  down  :  Godolphin  remained  silent. 

"  Nay,  Mr.  Godolphin,  answer  me,"  said  Lady  Charlotte  ;  "I 
appeal  to  you  !  " 

"  First  love,  then,"  said  Godolphin,  endeavoring  to  speak 
composedly,  "  has  this  advantage  over  others — it  is  usually  disap- 
pointed, and  regret  forever  keeps  it  alive." 

The  tone  of  his  voice  struck  Constance  to  the  heart.  Nor  did 
she  speak  again — save  with  visible  effort — during  the  rest  of  the 
evening. 


J  74  GODOLPHIN. 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

CONSTANCE'S  UNDIMINISHED  LOVE  FOR  GUDOLPHIN. — HER  REMORSE 

AND  HER  HOPE. — THE  CAPITOL. THE  DIFFERENT  THOUGHTS  OF 

GODOLPHIN  AND  CONSTANCE  AT  THE  VIEW. — THE  TENDER  EX- 
PRESSIONS OF  CONSTANCE. 

ALL  that  Constance  heard  from  others  of  Godolphin's  life  since 
they  parted,  increased  her  long-nursed  interest  in  his  fate.  His 
desultory  habits,  his  long  absences  from  cities,  which  were  un- 
derstood to  be  passed  in  utter  and  obscure  solitude  (  for  the  part- 
ner of  the  solitude  and  its  exact  spot  were  not  known ),  she 
coupled  with  the  quiet  melancholy  in  his  aspect,  with  his  half- 
reproachful  glances  toward  herself,  and  with  the  emotions  which 
he  had  given  vent  to  their  conversation.  And  of  this  objectless 
and  unsatisfactory  life  she  was  led  to  consider  herself  the  cause. 
With  a  bitter  pang  she  recalled  his  early  words,  when  he  said  ; 
"My  future  is  in  your  hands  ;"  and  she  contrasted  his  vivid  ener- 
gies, his  cultivated  mind,  his  high  talents,  with  the  life  which  had 
rendered  them  all  so  idle  to  others  and  so  unprofitable  to  himself. 
Few,  very  few,  know  how  powerfully  the  sentiment  that  another's 
happiness  is  at  her  control  speaks  to  a  woman's  heart.  Accus- 
tomed to  dependence  herself,  the  feeling  that  another  depends  on 
her  is  the  most  soothing  ailment  to  her  pride.  This  makes  a  main 
cause  of  her  love  to  her  children  ;  they  would  be  incomparably 
less  dear  to  her  if  they  were  made  independent  of  her  cares. 
And  years,  which  had  brought  the  young  Countess  acquainted 
with  the  nothingness  of  the  world,  had  softened  and  deepened 
the  sources  of  her  affections,  in  proportion  as  they  had  checked 
those  of  her  ambition.  She  could  not,  she  did  not,  seek  to  dis- 
guise from  herself  that  Godolphin  yet  loved  her  ;  she  anticipated 
the  hour  when  he  would  avow  that  love,  and  when  she  might  be 
permitted  to  atone  for  all  of  disappointment  that  her  former  re- 
jection might  have  brought  to  him.  She  felt,  too,  that  it  would 
be  a  noble  as  well  as  delightful  task,  to  awaken  an  intellect  so 
brilliant  to  the  natural  objects  of  its  display ;  to  call  forth  into 
active  life  his  teeming  thought,  and  the  rich  eloquence  with 
which  he  could  convey  it.  For  in  this  hope  were  her  more  sel- 
fish designs,  her  political  schemings,  and  her  desire  of  sway  over 
those  whom  she  loved  to  humble,  forgotten  ;  but  they  made, 
however, — to  be  just, — a  small  part  of  her  meditations.  Her 
hopes  were  chiefly  of  a  more  generous  order ;  "I  refused  thee," 
she  thought,  "  when  I  was  poor  and  dependent ;  now  that  I  have 
wealth  and  rank,  how  gladly  will  I  yield  them  to  thy  bidding  !  " 


GODOLPHIN.  175 

But  Godolphin,  as  if  unconscious  of  this  favorable  bias  of  her 
inclinations,  did  not  warm  from  his  reserve.  On  the  contrary, 
his  first  abstraction,  and  his  first  agitation,  had  both  subsided 
into  a  distant  and  cool  self-possession.  They  met  often,  but  he 
avoided  all  nearer  or  less  general  communication.  She  saw,  how- 
ever, that  his  eyes  were  constantly  in  search  of  her,  and  that  a 
slight  trembling  in  his  voice  when  he  addressed  her,  belied  the 
calmness  of  his  manner.  Sometimes,  too,  a  word  or  a  touch 
from  her,  would  awaken  the  ill-concealed  emotions,  his  lips 
seemed  to  own  the  triumph  of  her  and  of  the  past ;  but,  as  if  by 
a  violent  effort,  they  were  again  sealed  ;  and  not  unoften,  evi- 
dently unwilling  to  trust  his  self-command,  he  would  abruptly  de- 
part. In  short,  Constance  perceived  that  a  strange  embarrass- 
ment, the  causes  of  which  she  could  not  divine,  hung  about  him, 
and  that  his  conduct  was  regulated  by  some  secret  motive,  which 
did  not  spring  from  the  circumstances  that  had  occurred  between 
them.  For  it  was  evident  that  he  was  not  withheld  by  any  resent- 
ment towards  her  from  her  former  rejection :  even  his  looks,  his 
words,  had  betrayed  that  he  had  done  more  than  forgive.  Lady  Char- 
lotte Deerham  had  heard  from  Saville  of  their  former  attachment : 
she  was  a  woman  of  the  world,  and  thought  it  but  common  delicacy 
to  give  them  all  occasion  to  renew  it.  She  always,  therefore,  took  oc- 
casion to  retire  from  the  immediate  vicinity  of  Constance  whenever 
Godolphin  approached,  and,  as  if  by  accident,  to  leave  them  the 
opportunity  to  be  sufficiently  alone.  This  was  a  danger  that  Godol- 
phin had,  however,  hitherto  avoided.  r  One  day  fate  counteracted 
prudence,  and  a  conference  ensued  which  perplexed  Constance 
and  tried  severely  the  resolution  of  Godolphin. 

They  went  together  to  the  Capitol,  from  whose  height  is  be- 
held, perhaps,  the  most  imposing  landscape  in  the  world.  It  was 
a  sight  pre-eminently  calculated  to  arouse  and  inspire  the  am- 
bitious and  working  mind  of  the  young  Countess. 

"  Do  you  think,"  said  she  to  Godolphin,  who  stood  beside  her, 
' '  that  there  lives  any  one  who  could  behold  these  countless  monu- 
ments of  eternal  glory,  and  not  sigh  to  recall  the  triteness,  or 
rather  burn  to  rise  from  the  level,  of  our  ordinary  life  ?  " 

"  Nay,"  said  Godolphin ;  "to  you  the  view  may  be  an  inspi- 
ration, to  others  a  warning.  The  arch  and  the  ruin  you  survey, 
speak  of  change  yet  more  eloquently  than  glory.  Look  on  the 
spot  where  once  was  the  temple  of  Romulus — there  stands  the 
little  church  of  an  obscure  saint.  Just  below  you  is  the  Tarpeian 
Rock :  we  cannot  see  it ;  it  is  hidden  from  us  by  a  crowd  of 
miserable  houses.  Along  the  ancient  plain  of  Campus  Martius 
behold  the  numberless  spires  of  a  new  religion  and  the  palaces  of 


1 76  GODOLPHIN. 

a  modern  race  !  Amidst  them  you  see  the  triumphal  columns  of 
Trajan  and  Marcus  Antoninus ;  but  whose  are  the  figures  that 
crown  their  summits?  St.  Peter's  and  St.  Paul's  !  And  this  awful 
wilderness  of  men's  labors — this  scene  and  token  of  human  revo- 
lutions— inspires  you  with  a  love  of  glory  ;  to  me  it  proves  its 
nothingness.  An  irresistible,  a  crushing  sense  of  the  littleness 
and  brief  life  of  our  most  ardent  and  sagacious  achievements, 
seems  to  me  to  float  like  a  voice  over  the  place  !  " 

"And  are  you  still,  then,"  said  Constance,  with  a  half  sigh, 
"  dead  to  all  but  the  enjoyment  of  the  present  moment?  " 

"  No,"  replied  Godolphin,  in  a  low  and  trembling  voice  :  "  I 
am  not  dead  to  the  regret  of  the  past  !  " 

Constance  blushed  deeply ;  but  Godolphin,  as  if  feeling  he  had 
committed  himself  too  far,  continued  in  a  hurried  tone  :  "Let  us 
turn  our  eyes, ' '  said  he,  ' '  yonder  among  the  olive  groves. 
There— 

« Far  from  the  madding  crowd's  ignoble  strife, ' 

were  the  summer  retreats  of  Rome's  brightest  and  most  enduring 
spirits.  There,  was  the  retirement  of  Horace  and  Maecenas; 
there,  Brutus  forgot  his  harsher  genius ;  and  there,  the  inscruta- 
ble and  profound  Augustus  indulged  in  those  graceful  relaxations 
— those  sacrifices  to  wit,  and  poetry,  and  wisdom — which  have 
made  us  do  so  unwilling  and  reserved  a  justice  to  the  crimes  of 
his  earlier  and  the  hypocrisy  of  his  later  years.  Here,  again,  is  a 
reproach  to  your  ambition,"  added  Godolphin,  smiling;  "his 
ambition  made  Augustus  odious  :  his  occasional  forgetfulness  of 
ambition  alone  redeems  him." 

"And  what,  then,"  said  Constance,  "would  you  consider 
inactivity  the  happiest  life  for  one  sensible  of  talents  higher  than 
the  common  standard  ?  " 

"Nay,  let  those  talents  be  devoted  to  the  discovery  of  pleas- 
ures, not  the  search  after  labors ;  the  higher  our  talents,  the 
keener  our  perceptions ;  the  keener  our  perceptions,  the  more 
intense  our  capacities  for  pleasure :  *  let  pleasure,  then,  be  cm 
object.  Let  us  find  out  what  is  best  fitted  to  give  our  peculiar 
tastes  gratification,  and,  having  found  out,  steadily  pursue  it." 

"  Out  on  you  !  It  is  a  selfish,  an  ignoble  system,"  said  Con- 
stance. "You  smile — well,  I  may  be  unphilosophical,  I  do  not 
deny  it.  But,  give  me  one  hour  of  glory,  rather  than  a  life  of 
luxurious  indolence.  Oh,  would,"  added  Constance,  kindling  as 

*  I  suppose  Godolphin  by  the  word^/easure  rather  signifies  happiness* 


GODOLPHIN.  1 7  7 

she  spoke,  "  that  you — you,  Mr.  Godolphin — with  an  intellect  so 
formed  for  high  accomplishment ;  with  all  the  weapons  and 
energies  of  life  at  your  command, — would  that  you  could  awaken 
to  a  more  worthy  estimate — pardon  me — of  the  uses  of  exertion  ! 
Surely,  surely,  you  mast  be  sensible  of  the  calls  that  your  country, 
that  mankind,  have  at  this  epoch  of  the  world,  upon  all — all, 
especially,  possessing  your  advantages  and  powers.  Can  we 
pierce  one  inch  beyond  the  surface  of  society,  and  not  see  that 
great  events  are  hastening  to  their  birth?  Will  you  let  those 
inferior  to  yourself  hurry  on  before  you,  and  sit  inactive  while 
they  win  the  reward  ?  Will  you  have  no  share  in  the  bright  drama 
that  is  already  prepared  behind  the  dark  curtain  of  fate,  and 
which  will  have  a  world  for  its  spectators  ?  Ah,  how  rejoiced, 
how  elated  with  myself  I  should  feel,  if  I  could  win  over  one  like 
you  to  the  great  cause  of  honorable  exertion  !  " 

For  one  instant  Godolphin's  eye  sparkled,  and  his  pale  cheek 
burned,  but  the  transient  emotion  faded  away,  as  he  answered  : 

' '  Eight  years  ago,  when  she  who  spoke  to  me  was  Constance 
Vernon,  her  wish  might  have  moulded  me  according  to  her  will. 
Now,"  and  he  struggled  with  emotion,  and  turned  away  his  face; 
"  Now  it  is  too  late  !  " 

Constance  was  smitten  to  the  heart.  She  laid  her  hand  gently 
on  his  arm,  and  said,  in  a  sweet  and  soothing  tone,  "  No,  Percy, 
not  too  late  !  " 

At  that  instant,  and  before  Godolphin  could  reply,  they  were 
joined  by  Saville  and  Lady  Charlotte  Deerham. 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

LUCILLA'S  LETTER. — THE  EFFECT  IT  PRODUCES  ON  GODOLPHIN. 

THE  short  conversation  recorded  in  the  last  chapter  could  not 
but  show  to  Godolphin  the  dangerous  ground  on  which  his  fidelity 
to  Lucilla  rested.  Never  before — no,  not  in  the  young  time  of  their 
first  passion — had  Constance  seemed  to  him  so  lovely  or  so  worthy 
of  love.  Her  manners  now  were  so  much  more  soft  and  unre- 
served than  they  had  necessarily  been  at  a  period  when  Constance 
had  resolved  not  to  listen  to  his  addresses  or  her  own  heart,  that 
the  only  part  of  her  character  that  had  ever  repulsed  his  pride,  or 
offended  his  tastes,  seemed  vanished  forever.  A  more  subdued 
and  gentle  spirit  had  descended  on  her  surpassing  beauty,  and 
the  change  was  of  an  order  that  Percy  Godolphin  could  especially 
appreciate.  And  the  world,  for  which  he  owned  reluctantly  that 
she  yet  lived  too  much,  had,  nevertheless,  seemed  rather  to 
12 


1 7°  GODOLPHIN. 

enlarge  and  animate  the  natural  nobleness  of  her  mind,  than  to 
fritter  it  down  to  the  standard  of  its  common  votaries.  When 
she  spoke  he  delighted  in,  even  while  he  dissented  from,  the  high 
and  bold  views  which  she  conceived.  He  loved  her  indignation 
of  all  that  was  mean  and  low,  her  passion  for  all  that  was  daring 
and  exalted.  Never  was  he  cast  down  from  the  height  of  the 
imaginative  part  of  his  love,  by  hearing  from  her  lips  one  petty 
passion,  or  one  sordid  desire  :  much  about  her  was  erroneous, 
but  all  was  lofty  and  generous — even  in  error.  And  the  years 
that  had  divided  them  had  only  taught  him  to  feel  more  deeply 
how  rare  was  the  order  of  her  character,  and  how  impossible  it 
was  ever  to  behold  her  like.  All  the  sentiments,  faculties,  emo- 
tions, which,  in  his  affection  for  Lucilla,  had  remained  dormant, 
were  excited  into  full  play  the  moment  he  was  in  the  presence  of 
Constance.  She  engrossed  no  petty  portion — she  demanded  and 
obtained  the  whole  empire — of  his  soul.  And  against  this  empire 
he  had  now  to  contend  !  Torn  as  he  was  by  a  thousand  conflict- 
ing emotions,  a  letter  from  Lucilla  was  suddenly  put  into  his 
hands  ;  its  contents  were  as  follows  : 

LUCILLA' s  LETTER. 

"  Thy  last  letter,  my  love,  was  so  short  and  hurried,  that  it  has 
not  cost  me  my  usual  pains  to  learn  it  by  heart;  nor  (shall  I  tell 
the  truth?)  have  I  been  so  eager  as  I  once  was  to  commit  all  thy 
words  to  my  memory.  Why,  I  know  not,  and  will  guess  not, 
but  there  is  something  in  thy  letters  since  we  parted  that  chills 
me  ;  they  throw  back  my  heart  upon  itself.  I  tear  open  the  seal 
with  so  much  eagerness,  thou  wouldst  smile  if  thou  couldst  see 
me  ;  and  when  I  discover  how  few  are  the  words  upon  which  I 
am  to  live  for  many  days,  I  feel  sick  and  disappointed,  and  lay 
down  the  letter.  Then  I  chide  myself,  and  say,  '  At  least  these 
few  words  will  be  kind  !  '  and  I  spell  them  one  by  one,  not  to 
hurry  over  my  only  solace.  Alas  !  before  I  arrive  at  the  end,  I 
am  blinded  by  my  tears  ;  my  love  for  thee,  so  bounding  and  full 
of  life,  seems  frozen  and  arrested  at  every  line.  And  then  I  lie 
down  for  very  weariness,  and  wish  to  die.  O  God,  if  the  time 
has  come  which  I  have  always  dreaded  ;  if  thou  shouldst  no  longer 
love  me  !  And  how  reasonable  this  fear  is  !  For  what  am  I  to 
thee?  How  often  dost  thou  complain  that  I  can  understand  thee 
not ;  how  often  dost  thou  imply  that  there  is  much  of  thy  nature 
which  I  am  incapable — unworthy — to  learn  !  If  this  be  so,  how 
natural  is  it  to  dread  that  thou  wilt  find  others  whom  thou  wilt 
fancy  more  congenial  to  thee,  and  that  absence  will  only  remind 
thee  more  of  my  imperfections  ! 


GODOLPHIN.  179 

' '  And  yet  I  think  that  I  have  read  thee  to  the  letter ; 
I  think  that  my  love  which  is  always  following  thee,  always 
watching  thee,  always  conjecturing  thy  wishes,  must  have 
penetrated  into  every  secret  of  thy  heart :  only  I  want  words 
to  express  what  I  feel,  and  thou  layest  the  blame  upon  the 
want  of  feeling  !  I  know  how  untutored,  how  ignorant,  I  must 
seem  to  thee ;  and  sometimes — and  lately  very  often — I  re- 
proach myself  that  I  have  not  more  diligently  sought  to 
make  myself  a  worthier  companion  to  thee.  I  think  if  I  had 
the  same  means  as  others,  I  should  acquire  the  same  facility  of 
expressing  my  thoughts ;  and  my  thoughts  thou  couldst  never 
blame,  for  I  know  that  they  are  full  of  a  love  to  thee  which — no 
— not  the  wisest — the  most  brilliant — whom  thou  mayest  see 
could  equal  in  imagination.  But  I  have  sought  to  mend  this 
deficiency  since  we  parted  ;  and  I  have  looked  into  all  the  books 
thou  hast  loved  to  read,  and  I  fancy  that  I  have  imbibed  now  the 
same  ideas  which  pleased  thee,  and  in  which  once  thou  imagin- 
edst  I  could  not  sympathize.  Yet  how  mistaken  thou  hast  been ! 
I  see,  by  the  marks  thou  hast  placed  on  the  page,  the  sentiments 
that  more  especially  charm  thee;  and  I  know  that  I  have  felt 
them  much,  oh  !  how  much  more  deeply  and  vividly  than  they 
are  there  expressed — only  they  seem  to  me  to  have  no  language : 
methinks  that  I  have  learned  the  language  now.  And  I  have 
taught  myself  songs  thou  wilt  love  to  hear  when  thou  returnest 
home  to  me ;  and  I  have  practised  music,  and  I  think — nay,  I 
am  sure  that  time  will  not  pass  so  heavily  with  thee  as  when  thou 
wast  last  here. 

' '  And  when  shall  I  see  thee  again  ? — forgive  me  if  I  press  thee 
to  return.  Thou  hast  stayed  away  longer  than  thou  hast  been 
wont,  but  that  I  would  not  heed  ;  it  is  not  the  number  of  days, 
but  the  sensations  with  which  I  have  counted  them,  that  make  me 
pine  for  thy  beloved  voice,  and  long  once  more  to  behold  thee. 
Never  before  did  I  so  feel  thy  absence ;  never  before  was  I  so 
utterly  wretchedly.  A  secret  voice  whispers  me  that  we  are 
parted  forever.  I  cannot  withstand  the  omens  of  my  own  heart. 
When  my  poor  father  lived,  I  did  not,  child  as  I  was,  partake  of 
those  sentiments  with  which  he  was  wont  to  say  the  stars  inspired 
us.  I  could  not  see  in  them  the  boders  of  fear  and  the  preachers 
of  sad  tidings ;  they  seemed  to  be  only  full  of  serenity  and  ten- 
derness, and  the  promise  of  enduring  love  !  And  ever  when  I 
looked  on  them,  I  thought  of  thee ;  and  thy  image  to  me  then, 
as  thou  knowest  it  was  from  childhood,  was  bright  with  unimag- 
inable, but  never  melancholy  spells.  But  now,  although  I  love 
thee  so  the  more  powerfully,  I  cannot  divest  the  thoughts  of 


l8o  GODOLPHIN. 

from  a  certain  sadness ;  and  so  the  stars,  which  are  like  thee, 
which  are  full  of  chee,  have  a  sadness  also  !  And  this,  the  bed, 
where  every  morning  I  stretch  my  arms  for  thee,  and  find  thee 
not,  and  have  yet  to  live  through  the  day,  and  on  which  I  now 
write  this  letter  to  thee — for  I,  who  used  to  rise  with  the  sun,  am 
now  too  dispirited  not  to  endeavor  to  cheat  the  weary  day — I 
have  made  them  place  nearer  to  the  window ;  and  I  look  out 
upon  the  still  skies  every  night,  and  have  made  a  friend  of  every 
star  I  see.  I  question  it  of  thyself,  and  wonder,  when  thou  look- 
est  at  it,  if  thou  hast  any  thought  of  me  !  I  love  to  look  upon  the 
heavens  much  more  than  upon  the  earth  ;  for  the  trees,  and  the 
waters,  and  the  hills  around,  thou  canst  not  behold ;  but  the 
same  heaven  which  I  survey  is  above  thee  also ;  and  this,  our 
common  companion,  seems  in  some  measure  to  unite  us.  And 
I  have  thought  over  my  father's  lore,  and  have  tried  to  learn  it; 
nay,  thou  mayest  smile,  but  it  is  thy  absence  that  has  taught  me 
superstition. 

"But  tell  me,  dearest,  kindest,  tell  me  when — oh,  when  wilt 
thou  return  ?  Return  only  this  once,  if  but  for  a  day,  and  I  will 
never  persecute  thee  again.  Truant  as  thou  art,  thou  shalt  have 
full  liberty  for  life.  But  I  cannot  tell  thee  how  sad  and  heavy  I 
am  grown,  and  every  hour  knocks  at  my  heart  like  a  knell !  Come 
back  to  thy  poor  Lucilla,  if  only  to  see  what  joy  is  !  Come — I 
know  thou  wilt !  But  should  anything  I  do  not  foresee  detain 
thee,  fix  at  least  the  day — nay,  if  possible,  the  hour — when  we 
shall  meet,  and  let  the  letter  which  conveys  such  happy  tidings  be 
long,  and  kind,  and  full  of  thee,  as  they  letters  once  were.  I 
know  I  weary  thee,  but  I  cannot  help  it.  I  am  weak,  and 
dejected,  and  cast  down,  and  have  only  heart  enough  to  pray  for 
thy  return." 

"You  have  conquered —you  have  conquered,  Lucilla!"  said 
Godolphin,  as  he  kissed  this  wild  and  reproachful  letter,  and 
thrust  it  into  his  bosom;  "and  I — I — will  be  wretched  rather 
than  you  shall  be  so  !  " 

His  heart  rebuked  him  even  for  that  last  sentence.  This  pure 
and  devoted  attachment,  was  it  indeed  an  unhappiness  to  obtain, 
and  a  sacrifice  to  return  !  Stung  by  his  thoughts,  and  impatient 
of  rest,  he  hurried  into  the  air ;  he  traversed  the  city ;  he  passed 
St.  Sebastian's  gate,  gained  the  Appia  Via,  and  saw,  lone  and 
sombre,  as  of  old,  the  house  of  the  departed  Volktman.  He 
had  half  unconsciously  sought  that  direction,  in  order  to 
strengthen  his  purpose,  and  sustain  his  conscience  in  its  right 
path.  He  now  hurried  onwards,  and  stopped  not  till  he  stood  in 


GODOLPHIN.  l8l 

that  lovely  and  haunted  spot — the  valley  of  Egeria — in  which  he 
had  met  Lucilla  on  the  day  that  he  first  learned  her  love.  There 
was  a  gloom  over  the  scene  now,  for  the  day  was  dark  and 
clouded :  the  birds  were  silent ;  a  heavy  oppression  seemed  to 
brood  upon  the  air.  He  entered  that  grotto  which  is  the  witness 
of  the  most  beautiful  love-story  chronicled  even  in  the  soft  south. 
He  recalled  the  passionate  and  burning  emotions,  which,  the  last 
time  he  had  been  within  that  cell,  he  had  felt  for  Lucilla,  and 
had  construed  erroneously  into  real  love.  As  he  looked  around, 
how  different  an  aspect  the  spot  wore  !  Then,  those  walls,  that 
spring,  even  that  mutilated  statue,  had  seemed  to  him  the 
encouragers  of  the  soft  sensations  he  had  indulged.  Now,  they 
appeared  to  reprove  the  very  weakness  which  hallowed  themselves 
— the  associations  spoke  to  him  in  another  tone.  The  broken 
statue  of  the  river  god,  the  desert  silence  in  which  the  water  of 
the  sweet  fountain  keeps  its  melancholy  course ;  the  profound  and 
chilling  solititude  of  the  spot — all  seemed  eloquent,  not  of  love, 
but  the  broken  hope  and  the  dreary  loneliness  that  succeed  it  ! 
The  gentle  plant  (the  capillaire)  that  overhangs  the  sides  of  the 
grotto,  and  nourishes  itself  on  the  dews  of  the  fountain,  seemed 
an  emblem  of  love  itself  after  disappointment — the  love  that 
might  henceforth  be  Lucilla's — drooping  in  silence  on  the  spot 
once  consecrated  to  rapture,  and  feeding  itself  with  tears.  There 
was  something  mocking  to  human  passion  in  the  very  antiquity 
of  the  spot ;  four-and-twenty  centuries  had  passed  away  since  the 
origin  of  the  tale  that  made  it  holy — and  that  tale,  too,  was 
fable  !  What,  in  this  vast  accumulation  of  the  sands  of  time, 
was  a  solitary  atom  !  What,  among  the  millions,  the  myriads, 
that  around  that  desolate  spot  had  loved,  and  forgotten  love,  was 
the  brief  passion  of  one  mortal,  withering  as  it  sprung  !  Thus 
differently  moralizes  the  heart,  according  to  the  passion  which 
bestows  on  it  the  text. 

Before  he  regained  his  home,  Godolphin's  resolve  was  taken. 
The  next  day  he  had  promised  Constance  to  attend  her  to  Tivoli ; 
he  resolved  then  to  take  leave  of  her,  and  on  the  following  day 
to  return  to  Lucilla.  He  remembered  with  bitter  reproach  that 
he  had  not  written  to  her  for  a  length  of  time,  treble  the  accus- 
tomed interval  between  his  letters  ;  and  felt  that,  while  at  the 
moment  she  had  written  the  lines  he  had  now  pressed  to  his  bosom, 
she  was  expecting,  with  unutterable  fondness  and  anxiety,  to  re- 
ceive his  lukewarm  assurances  of  continued  love,  the  letter  he  was 
about  to  write  in  answer  to  hers  was  the  first  one  that  would  greet 
her  eyes.  But  he  resolved,  that  in  that  letter,  at  least,  she 
should  'iOt  be  disappointed.  He  wrote  at  length,  and  with  all 


1 82  GODOLPHIN. 

the  outpourings  of  a  tendernesss  re-awakened  by  remorse.  He 
informed  her  of  his  immediate  return,  and  even  forced  himself  to 
dwell  upon  it  with  kindly  hypocrisy  of  transport.  For  the  first 
time  for  several  weeks,  he  felt  satisfied  with  himself  as  he  sealed 
his  letter.  It  is  doubtful  whether  that  letter  Lucilla  ever 
received. 

CHAPTER  XL. 

TIVOLI. — THE  SIREN'S  CAVE. — THE  CONFESSION. 

ALONG  the  deathly  eampagna,  a  weary  and  desolate  length  of 
way,  through  a  mean  and  squalid  row  of  houses,  you  thread  your 
course  ;  and  behold — Tivoli  bursts  upon  you  ! 

"Look — look!"  cried  Constance,  with  enthusiasm,  as  she 
pointed  to  the  rushing  torrent  that,  through  matted  trees  and 
cragged  precipices,  thundered  on. 

Astonished  at  the  silence  of  Godolphin,  whom  scenery  was 
usually  so  wont  to  kindle  and  inspire,  she  turned  hastily  round, 
and  her  whole  tide  of  feeling  was  revulsed  by  the  absorbed  but 
intense  dejection  written  on  his  countenance. 

"  Why,"  said  she,  after  a  short  pause,  and  affecting  a  playful 
smile,  "Why,  how  provoking  is  this  !  In  general,  not  a  common 
patch  of  green  with  an  old  tree  in  the  centre,  not  a  common  riv- 
ulet with  a  willow  hanging  over  it,  escapes  you.  You  insist  upon 
our  sharing  your  raptures ;  you  dilate  on  the  picturesque ;  you 
rise  into  eloquence ;  nay,  you  persuade  us  into  your  enthusiasm, 
or  you  quarrel  with  us  for  our  coldness ;  and  now,  with  this  di- 
vinest  of  earthly  scenes  around  us;  when  even  Lady  Charlotte  is 
excited,  and  Mr.  Saville  forgets  himself,  you  are  stricken  into 
silence  and  apathy  !  The  reason — if  it  be  not  too  abstruse  ?  " 

"  It  is  here  !  "  said  Godolphin,  mournfully,  and  pressing  his 
hand  to  his  heart. 

Constance  turned  aside ;  she  indulged  herself  with  the  hope 
that  he  alluded  to  former  scenes,  and  despaired  of  the  future 
from  their  remembrance.  She  connected  his  melancholy  with 
herself,  and  knew  that,  when  referred  to  her,  she  could  dispel  it. 
Inspired  by  this  idea,  and  exhilarated  by  the  beauty  of  the  morn- 
ing and  the  wonderful  magnificence  of  nature,  she  indulged  her 
spirits  to  overflowing.  And  as  her  brilliant  mind  lighted  up  every 
subject  it  touched,  now  glowing  over  description,  now  flashing  into 
remark,  Godolphin  at  one  time  forgot,  and  at  another  more  keenly 
felt,  the  magnitude  of  the  sacrifice  he  was  about  to  make.  But 
every  one  knows  that  feeling  which,  when  we  are  unhappy,  U- 


GODOLPHIN.  183 

lumines  (if  I  may  so  speak)  our  outward  seeming  from  the  fierce, 
ness  of  our  inward  despair  ;  that  recklessness  which  is  the  intox- 
ication of  our  grief. 

By  degrees  Godolphin  broke  from  his  reserve.  He  seemed  to 
catch  the  enthusiasm  of  Constance  ;  he  echoed  back — he  led  into 
new  and  more  dazzling  directions — the  delighted  remarks  of  his 
beautiful  companion.  His  mind,  if  not  profoundly  learned,  at 
least  irregularly  rich,  in  the  treasures  of  old  times,  called  up  a 
spirit  from  every  object.  The  waterfall,  the  ruin,  the  hollow 
cave,  the  steep  bank  crested  with  the  olive,  the  airy  temple,  the 
dark  pomp  of  the  cypress  grove,  and  the  roar  of  the  headlong 
Anio — all  he  touched  with  the  magic  of  the  past,  clad  with  the 
glories  of  history  and  of  legend,  and  decked  ever  and  anon  with 
the  flowers  of  the  eternal  Poesy  that  yet  walks,  mourning  for  her 
children,  amongst  the  vines  and  waterfalls  of  the  ancient  Tibur. 
And  Constance,  as  she  listened  to  him,  entranced,  until  she  her- 
self unconsciously  grew  silent,  indulged  without  reserve  in  that, 
the  proudest  luxury  of  love — pride  in  the  beloved  object.  Never 
had  the  rare  and  various  genius  of  Godolphin  appeared  so  worthy 
of  admiration.  When  his  voice  ceased,  it  seemed  to  Constance 
like  a  sudden  blank  in  the  creation. 

Godolphin  and  the  young  Countess  were  several  paces  before 
the  little  party,  and  they  now  took  their  way  towards  the  Siren's 
Cave.  The  path  that  leads  to  that  singular  spot  is  humid  with 
an  eternal  spray ;  and  it  is  so  abrupt  and  slippery,  that  in  order 
to  preserve  your  footing,  you  must  cling  to  the  bushes  that  vege- 
tate around  the  sides  of  the  precipice. 

"  Let  us  dispense  with  our  guide,"  said  Godolphin.  "  I  know 
every  part  of  the  way,  and  I  am  sure  you  share  with  me  in  dislike 
to  these  hackneyed  indicators  and  sign-posts  for  admiration.  Let 
us  leave  him  to  Lady  Charlotte  and  Saville,  and  suffer  me  to  be 
your  guide  to  the  cavern."  Constance  readily  enough  assented, 
and  they  proceeded.  Saville,  by  no  means  liking  the  difficult 
and  perilous  path  which  was  to  lead  only  to  a  very  cold  place, 
soon  halted,  and  suggested  to  Lady  Charlotte  the  propriety  of 
doing  the  same.  Lady  Charlotte  much  preferred  the  wit  of  her 
companion's  conversation  to  the  picturesque  ;  "  Besides,"  as  she 
said,  "she  had  seen  the  cave  before."  Accordingly,  they  both 
waited  for  the  return  of  the  more  adventurous  Countess  and  her 
guide. 

Unconscious  of  the  defalcation  of  her  friends,  and  not — from 
the  attention  that  every  step  required — once  looking  behind,  Con- 
stance continued.  And  now,  how  delightful  to  her  seemed  that 
rugged  way,  as,  with  every  moment,  Godolphin's  care — Godol- 


1 84  GODOLPHIN. 

phin's  hand  became  necessary,  and  he,  inspired,  inflamed  by  her 
company,  by  her  touch,  by  the  softness  of  her  manner,  and  the 
devotion  of  her  attention — no,  no  !  net  yet,  was  Lucilla  forgotten  ! 

And  now  they  stood  within  the  Siren's  Cave.  From  this  spot 
alone  you  can  view  that  terrible  descent  of  waters  which  rushes  to 
earth  like  the  coming  of  a  god  !  The  rocks  dripped  around 
them — the  torrent  dashed  at  their  very  feet.  Down — down,  in 
thunder,  forever  and  forever,  dashed  the  might  of  the  madden- 
ing element;  above,  all  wrath;  below,  all  blackness; — there, 
the  cataract;  here,  the  abyss.  Not  a  moment's  pause  to  the  fury, 
not  a  moment's  silence  to  the  roar  ; — forward  to  the  last  glimpse 
of  the  sun — the  curse  of  labor,  and  the  soul  of  unutterable 
strength,  shall  be  upon  those  waters  !  The  demon,  tormented  to 
an  eternity,  filling  his  dread  dwelling-place  with  the  unresting 
and  unearthly  voice  of  his  rage  and  despair,  is  the  only  type  meet 
for  the  spirit  of  the  cataract. 

And  there — amidst  this  awful  and  tremendous  eternity  of  strife 
and  power — stood  two  beings  whose  momentary  existence  was 
filled  with  the  master-passion  of  humanity.  And  that  passion  was 
yet  audible  there  :  the  nature  without  could  not  subdue  that 
within.  Even  amidst  the  icy  showers  of  spray  that  fell  around, 
and  would  have  frozen  the  veins  of  others,  Godolphin  felt  the 
burning  at  his  heart.  Constance  was  indeed  utterly  lost  in  a 
whirl  and  chaos  of  awe  and  admiration,  which  deprived  her  of 
all  words.  But  it  was  the  nature  of  her  wayward  lover  to  be 
aroused  only  to  the  thorough  knowledge  of  his  powers  and  pas- 
sions among  the  more  unfrequent  and  fierce  excitements  of  life. 
A  wild  emotion  now  urged  him  on ;  something  of  that  turbulent 
exaggeration  of  mind  which  gave  rise  to  a  memorable  and  dis- 
puted saying  ;  "  If  thou  stoodest  on  a  precipice  with  thy  mistress, 
hast  thou  ever  felt  the  desire  to  plunge  with  her  into  the  abyss  ? — 
If  so — thou  hast  loved!  "  No  doubt  the  sentiment  is  exagger- 
ated, but  there  are  times  when  love  is  exaggerated  too.  And  now 
Constance,  without  knowing  it,  had  clung  closer  and  closer  to 
Godolphin.  His  hand  at  first — now  his  arm — supported  her  ;  and 
at  length,  by  an  irresistible  and  maddening  impulse,  he  clasped 
her  to  his  breast,  and  whispered  in  a  voice  which  was  heard  by 
her  even  amidst  the  thunder  of  the  giant  waters.  ' '  Here,  here, 
my  early — my  only  love,  I  feel,  in  spite  of  myself,  that  I  never 
utterly,  fully,  adored  you  until  now!  " 


GODOLPHIN.  185 

CHAPTER  XLI. 

LUCILLA. — THE    SOLITUDE. — THE    SPELL. — THE    DREAM    AND    THF 

RESOLVE. 

WHILE  the  above  events,  so  fatal  to  Lucilla,  were  in  progress  at 
Rome,  she  was  holding  an  unquiet  commune  with  her  own  pas- 
sionate and  restless  heart,  by  the  borders  of  the  lake,  whose  silver 
quiet  mocked  the  mind  it  had,  in  happier  moments,  reflected. 
She  had  now  dragged  on  the  weary  load  of  time  throughout  the 
winter ;  and  the  early  and  soft  spring  was  already  abroad,  smooth- 
ing the  face  of  the  waters,  and  calling  life  into  the  boughs.  Hith- 
erto this  time  of  the  year  had  possessed  a  mysterious  and  earnest 
attraction  for  Lucilla ;  now  all  its  voices  were  mute.  The  let- 
ters that  Godolphin  had  written  to  her  were  so  few,  and  so  re- 
strained, in  comparison  with  these  which  she  had  received  in  the 
former  periods  of  absence,  that — ever  alive  as  she  was  to  impulse, 
and  unregulated  by  settled  principles  of  hope — her  only  relief  to  a 
tearful  and  spiritless  dejection  was  in  paroxysms  of  doubt,  jeal- 
ousy, and  despair. 

It  is  the  most  common  thing  in  the  world,  that,  when  we  have 
once  wronged  a  person,  we  go  on  in  the  wrong,  from  a  certain 
soreness  with  which  conscience  links  the  associations  of  the  in- 
jured party.  And  thus,  Godolphin,  struggling  with  the  return  to 
his  early  and  never-forgotten  love,  felt  an  unwillingness  that  he 
could  seldom  successfully  combat,  in  playing  the  hypocrite  to 
Lucilla.  His  very  remorse  made  him  unkind ;  the  feeling  that 
he  ought  to  write  often,  made  him  write  seldom :  and  conscious 
that  he  ought  to  return  her  expressions  of  eager  devotion,  he 
returned  them  with  involuntary  awkwardness  and  reserve.  All 
this  is  very  natural,  and  very  evident  to  us ;  but  a  thousand  mys- 
teries were  more  acceptable  to,  more  sought  for  and  clung  to,  by 
Lucilla,  than  a  conjecture  at  the  truth. 

Meanwhile  she  fed  more  and  more  eagerly  on  those  vain 
researches  which  yet  beguiled  her  time,  and  flattered  her  imagina- 
tion. In  a  science  so  false,  and  so  unprofitable,  it  mattered,  hap- 
pily, little,  whether  or  not  the  poor  disciple  labored  with  success ; 
but  I  need  scarcely  tell  to  any  who  have  had  the  curiosity  to  look 
over  the  entangled  schemes  and  quaint  figures  of  the  art,  how 
slender  was  the  advancement  of  the  daughter  in  the  learning  of 
the  sire.  Still  it  was  a  comfort  and  a  soothing,  even  to  look  upon 
the. placid  heaven,  and  form  a  conjecture  as  to  the  language  of  its 
stars.  And,  above  all,  while  she  questioned  the  future,  she 
thought  only  of  her  lover.  But  day  after  day  passed — no  letter, 


1 86  GODOLPHI.N. 

or  worse  than  none ;  and  at  length  Lucilla  became  utterly  impa- 
tient of  all  rest :  a  nervous  fever  possessed  her ;  the  extreme  soli- 
tude of  the  place  filled  her  with  that  ineffable  sensation  of  irrita- 
bility which  sometimes  preludes  the  madness  that  has  been  pro- 
duced in  criminals  by  solitary  confinement. 

On  the  date  that  she  wrote  that  letter  to  Godolphin,  which  I 
have  transcribed,  this  painful  tension  of  the  nerves  was  more  than 
hitherto  acute.  She  longed  to  fly  somewhere ;  nay,  once  or 
twice,  she  remembered  that  Rome  was  easily  gained,  that  she 
might  be  there  as  expeditiously  as  her  letter.  Although  in  that 
letter  only  we  have  signified  that  Lucilla  had  expressed  her  wish 
for  Godolphin's  return ;  yet,  in  all  her  later  letters,  she  had  (per- 
haps, more  timidly)  urged  that  desire.  But  they  had  not  taken 
the  same  hold  on  Godolphin  ;  nor,  while  he  was  playing  with  his 
danger,  had  they  produced  the  same  energetic  resolution.  Lucilla 
could  not,  however,  hope  with  much  reason  that  the  success  of 
her  present  letter  would  be  greater  than  that  of  her  former  ones ; 
and,  at  all  events,  she  did  not  anticipate  an  immediate  compli- 
ance with  her  prayers.  She  looked  forward  to  some  excuses,  and 
to  some  delay.  We  cannot,  therefore,  wonder  that  she  felt  a 
growing  desire  to  follow  her  own  epistle  to  Rome  ;  and  although 
she  had  been  prevented  before,  and  still  drew  back  from  abso- 
lutely favoring  and  enforcing  the  idea,  by  the  fear  of  Godolphin's 
displeasure;  yet  she  trusted  enough  to  his  gentleness  of  charac- 
ter to  feel  sure  that  the  displeasure  could  scarcely  be  lasting. 
Still  the  step  was  bold,  and  Lucilla  loved  devotedly  enough  to  be 
timid  ;  and  besides,  her  inexperience  made  her  look  upon  the 
journey  as  a  far  more  formidable  expedition  than  it  really  was. 

Debating  the  notion  in  her  mind,  she  sought  her  usual  retreat, 
and  turned  listlessly  over  the  books  which  she  had  so  lately  loved 
to  study.  At  length,  in  moving  one  she  had  not  looked  into  be- 
fore, a  paper  fell  to  the  ground  ;  she  picked  it  up;  it  was  the  paper 
containing  that  figure,  which  it  will  be  remembered,  the  astrologer 
had  shown  to  his  daughter,  as  a  charm  to  produce  dreams  prophetic 
of  any  circumstance  or  person  concerning  whom  the  believer 
might  be  anxious  to  learn  aught.  As  she  saw  the  image,  which, 
the  reader  will  recollect,  was  of  a  remarkable  design,  the  whole 
of  her  conversation  with  Volktman  on  the  subject  rushed  into  her 
mind,  and  she  resolved  that  very  night  to  prove  the  efficacy  of 
the  charm  on  which  he  had  so  confidently  insisted.  Fraught 
with  the  chimerical  delusion,  she  now  longed  for  the  hours  to  pass, 
and  the  night  to  come.  She  looked  again  and  again  at  the  sin- 
gular image  and  the  portentous  figure?  wrought  upon  the  charm  ; 
the  very  strangeness  of  the  characters  inspired  her,  as  was^natural, 


GODOLPHIN.  T&7 

with  a  belief  in  their  efficacy ;  and  she  felt  a  thrill,  an  awe,  creep 
over  her  blood,  as  the  shadows  of  eve,  deepening  over  the  far 
mountains,  brought  on  the  time  of  trial.  At  length  it  was  night, 
and  Lucilla  sought  her  chamber. 

The  hour  was  exceedingly  serene,  and  the  stars  shone  through 
the  casement  with  a  lustre  that  to  her  seemed  ominous.  With 
bare  feet,  and  only  in  her  night-robe,  she  stole  tremblingly  across 
the  threshold.  She  paused  for  a  moment  at  the  window,  and 
looked  out  on  the  deep  and  quiet  night ;  and  as  she  so  stood,  it 
was  a  picture  that,  had  I  been  a  painter,  I  would  have  devoted 
a  youth  to  accomplish.  Half  in  light — half  in  shadow — her  un- 
dress gave  the  outline,  and  somewhat  more,  of  a  throat  and  breast, 
whose  roundness,  shape,  and  hue,  never  were  surpassed.  Her 
arms  were  lightly  crossed  above  her  bosom ;  and  her  long  rich 
hair  seeming  darker  by  that  light,  fell  profusely,  yet  not  dishev- 
elled, around  her  neck  ;  parting  from  her  brow.  Her  attitude  at 
that  moment  was  quite  still,  as  if  in  worship,  and  perhaps  it  was ; 
her  face  was  inclined  slightly  upward,  looking  to  the  heavens  and 
towards  Rome.  But  that  face — there  was  the  picture  !  It  was  so 
young,  so  infantine,  so  modest;  and  yet,  the  youth  and  the  tim- 
idity were  elevated  and  refined  by  the  earnest  doubt,  the  preter- 
natural terror,  the  unearthly  hope,  which  dwelt  upon  her  fore- 
head— her  parted  lip,  and  her  wistful  and  kindled  eye.  There 
was  a  sublimity  in  her  loneliness  and  her  years,  and  in  the  fond 
and  vain  superstition,  which  was  but  a  spirit  called  from  the  deeps 
of  an  unfathomable  and  mighty  love.  And  afar  was  heard  the 
breaking  of  the  lake  upon  the  shore — no  other  sound  !  And 
now,  among  the  unwaving  pines,  there  was  a  silver  shimmer  as 
the  moon  rose  into  her  empire,  and  deepened  at  once,  along  the 
universal  scene,  the  loveliness  and  the  awe. 

Lucilla  turned  from  the  window,  and  kneeling  down,  wrote 
with  a  trembling  hand  upon  the  figure  one  word — the  name  of 
Godolphin.  She  then  placed  it  under  her  pillow,  and  the  spell 
was  concluded.  The  astrologer  had  told  her  of  the  necessary 
co-operation  which  the  mind  must  afford  to  the  charm ;  but  it 
will  easily  be  believed  that  Lucilla  required  no  injunction  to  let 
her  imagination  dwell  upon  the  vision  she  expected  to  invoke. 
And  it  would  have  been  almost  strange,  if,  so  intently  and  earn- 
estly brooding,  as  she  had  done  over  the  image  of  Godolphin, 
that  image  had  not,  without  recurring  to  any  cabalistical  spells, 
been  present  to  her  dreams. 

She  thought  that  it  was  broad  noonday,  and  that  she  was  sitting 
alone  in  the  house  she  then  inhabited,  and  weeping  bitterly.  Of 
a  sudden  the  voice  of  Godolphin  called  to  her ;  she  ran  eagerly 


I  GODOLPHiN. 

forth,  but  no  sooner  had  she  passed  the  threshold,  than  the  scene 
so  familiar  to  her  vanished,  and  she  was  alone  in  an  immense  and 
pathless  wilderness  ;  there  was  no  tree  and  no  water  in  this  desert ; 
all  was  arid,  solitary,  and  inanimate.  But  what  seemed  most 
strange  to  her  was,  that  in  the  heavens,  although  they  were  clear 
and  bright,  there  was  neither  sun  nor  stars  ;  the  light  seemed  set- 
tled and  stagnant — there  was  in  it  no  life. 

And  she  thought  that  she  continued  to  move  involuntarily  along 
the  waste ;  and  that,  ever  and  anon,  she  yearned  and  strove  to 
rest,  but  her  limbs  did  not  obey  her  will,  and  a  power  she  could 
not  control  until  urged  her  onward. 

And  now  there  was  no  longer  an  utter  dumbness  and  death 
over  the  scene.  Forth  from  the  sands,  as  from  the  bowels  of  the 
reluctant  earth,  there  crept,  one  by  one,  loathly  and  reptile 
shapes;  obscene  sounds  rang  in  her  ears — now  in  a  hideous  mock- 
ery, now  in  a  yet  more  sickening  solicitation.  Shapes  of  terror 
thickened  and  crowded  round  her.  She  was  roused  by  dread 
into  action ;  she  hurried  faster  and  faster ;  she  strove  to  escape ; 
and  ever  as  she  fled,  the  sounds  grew  louder,  and  the  persecuting 
shapes  more  ghastly, — abominations  which  her  pure  mind  shud- 
dered to  behold,  presented  themselves  at  every  turn  :  there  was  no 
spot  for  refuge,  no  cave  for  concealment.  Wearied  and  despair- 
ing, she  stopped  short ;  but  then  the  shapes  and  sounds  seemed 
gradually  to  lose  their  terror ;  her  eye  and  ear  became  familiar  to 
them ;  and  what  at  first  seemed  foes,  grew  into  companions. 

And  now,  again,  the  wilderness  was  gone;  she  stood  in  a 
strange  spot,  and  opposite,  and  gazing  upon  her  with  intent  and 
mournful  eyes,  stood  Godolphin.  But  he  seemed  much  older 
than  he  was,  and  the  traces  of  care  were  ploughed  deeply  on  his 
countenance ;  and  above  them  both  hung  a  motionless  and  livid 
cloud ;  and  from  the  cloud  a  gigantic  hand  was  stretched  forth, 
pointing  with  a  shadowy  and  unmoving  figure  towards  a  quarter 
of  the  earth  which  was  enveloped  in  a  thick  gloom.  While  she 
sought  with  straining  eyes  to  penetrate  the  darkness  of  the  spot 
thus  fearfully  marked  out,  she  thought  Godolphin  vanished,  and 
all  was  sudden  and  utter  night — night,  but  not  stillness — for  there 
was  a  roar  as  of  many  winds,  and  a  dashing  of  angry  waters,  that 
seemed  close  beneath  ;  and  she  heard  the  trees  groan  and  bend, 
and  felt  the  icy  and  rushing  air :  the  tempests  were  abroad.  But 
amidst  the  mingling  of  the  mighty  sounds,  she  heard  distinctly 
the  ringing  of  a  horse's  hoofs ;  and  presently  a  wild  cry,  in  which 
she  recognized  the  voice  of  Godolphin,  rang  forth,  adding  to  the 
wrath  of  nature  the  yet  more  appalling  witness  of  a  human 
despair.  The  cry  was  followed  by  the  louder  dashing  of  the 


GODOLPHIN.  189 

waves,  and  the  fiercer  turmoil  of  the  winds;  and  then,  her  anguish 
and  horror  freeing  her  from  the  Prison  of  Sleep,  she  woke. 

It  was  near  day,  but  the  serenity  of  the  late  night  had  gone  ; 
the  rain  fell  in  torrents,  and  the  house  shook  beneath  the  fury  of 
a  violent  storm.  This  change  in  the  mood  of  nature  had  prob- 
ably influenced  the  latter  part  of  her  dream.  But  Lucilla  thought 
of  no  natural  solution  to  the  dreadful  vision  she  had  under- 
gone. Her  superstition  was  confirmed  and  ratified  by  the  intense 
impression  wrought  upon  her  mind  by  the  dream.  A  thousand 
unutterable  fears, —fears  for  Godolphin,  rather  than  herself;  or 
if  for  herself,  only  in  connection  with  him — bore  irresistible 
despotism  over  her  thoughts.  She  could  not  endure  to  wait,  to 
linger  any  longer  in  the  dark  and  agitated  suspense  she  herself 
had  created ;  the  idea  she  before  had  nursed,  now  became  resolve ; 
she  determined  forthwith  to  set  out  for  Rome — to  see  Godolphin. 
She  rose,  woke  her  attendant,  and  that  very  day  she  put  her  reso- 
lution into  effect. 

CHAPTER  XLII. 

JOY  AND  DESPAIR. 

IT  was  approaching  towards  the  evening  as  Lucilla  paused  for  a 
few  seconds  at  the  door  which  led  to  Godolphin's  apartments.  At 
length  she  summoned  courage.  The  servant  who  admitted  her 
was  Godolphin's  favorite  domestic  ;  and  he  was  amazed,  but  over- 
joyed, to  see  her ;  for  Lucilla  was  the  idol  of  all  who  knew  her — 
save  of  him  whose  love  only  she  cared  and  lived  for. 

His  master,  he  said,  was  gone  out  for  a  short  time,  but  the 
next  day  they  were  to  have  returned  home.  Lucilla  colored  with 
vivid  delight  to  hear  that  her  letter  had  produced  an  effect  she  had 
not  hoped  so  expeditiously  to  accomplish.  She  passed  on  into 
Godolphin's  apartment.  The  room  bore  evident  signs  of  ap- 
proaching departure ;  the  trunks  lay  half-packed  on  the  floor ; 
there  was  all  that  importance  of  confusion  around  which  makes 
to  the  amateur  traveller  a  luxury  out  of  discomfort.  Lucilla  sat 
down  and  waited,  anxious  and  trembling,  for  her  lover.  Her 
woman,  who  had  accompanied  her,  thinking  of  more  terrestial 
concerns  than  love,  left  her,  at  her  desire.  She  could  not  rest 
long  ;  she  walked,  agitated  and  expecting,  to  and  fro  the  long  and 
half-furnished  chamber  which  characterizes  the  Italian  palace. 
At  length,  her  eye  fell  on  an  open  letter  on  a  writing-table  at 
one  corner  of  the  room.  She  glanced  over  it  mechanically :  cer- 
tain words  suddenly  arrested  her  attention.  Were  those  words—. 


106  OODOLPHttf. 

words  of  passion — addressed  to  her  ?  If  not,  O  Heaven  !  to 
whom  ?  She  obeyed,  as  she  ever  did,  the  impulse  of  the  moment, 
and  read  what  follows  : 

"  CONSTANCE  !  As  I  write  that  word  how  many  remembrances 
rush  upon  me  !  For  how  many  years  has  that  name  been  a  talis- 
man tc  my  heart,  waking  its  emotions  at  will  !  You  are  the  first 
woman  I  ever  really  loved  :  you  rejected  me,  yet  I  could  not  dis- 
dain you.  You  became  another's  but  my  love  could  not  desert 
you.  Your  hand  wrote  the  history  of  my  life  after  the  period 
when  we  met, —  my  habits — my  thoughts — you  influenced  and 
colored  them  all !  And  now,  Constance,  you  are  free ;  and  I  love 
you  more  fervently  than  ever  !  And  you — yes,  you  would  not  re- 
ject me  now  ;  you  have  grown  wiser,  and  learned  the  value  of  a 
heart.  And  yet  the  same  Fate  that  divided  us  hitherto  will  divide 
us  now  ;  all  obstacles  but  one  are  passed  away — of  that  one  you 
shall  hear  and  judge. 

"When  we  parted,  Constance,  years  ago,  I  did  not  submit 
tamely  to  the  burning  remembrance  you  bequeathed  me  ;  I  sought 
to  dissipate  your  image,  and  by  wooing  others  to  forget  yourself. 
Need  I  say  that  to  know  another  was  only  to  remember  you  the 
more  ?  But  among  the  other  and  far  less  worthy  objects  of  my 
pursuit  was  one  whom,  had  I  not  seen  you  first,  I  might  have 
loved  as  ardently  as  I  do  you  :  and  in  the  first  flush  of  emotion, 
and  the  heat  of  sudden  events,  I  imagined  that  I  did  so  love  her. 
She  was  an  orphan,  a  child  in  years  and  in  the  world;  and  I  was 
all  to  her — I  am  all  to  her.  She  is  not  mine  by  the  ties  of  the 
Church,  but  I  have  pledged  a  faith  to  her  equally  sacred  and  as 
strong.  Shall  I  break  that  faith?  Shall  I  betray  that  trust?  Shall 
I  crush  a  heart  that  has  always  been  mine — mine  more  tenderly 
than  yours,  rich  in  a  thousand  gifts  and  resources,  ever  was  or 
ever  can  be  ?  Shall  I — sworn  to  protect  her — I,  who  have  already 
robbed  her  of  fame  and  friends,  rob  her  now  of  father,  brother, 
lover,  husband,  the  world  itself, — for  I  am  all  to  her  ?  Never — 
never  !  I  shall  be  wretched  throughout  life  :  I  shall  know  that  you 
are  free — that  you — oh  !  Constance, you  might  be  mine ! — but  she 
shall  never  dream  what  she  has  cost  me  !  I  have  been  too  cold, 
too  ungrateful  to  her,  already ;  I  will  make  her  amends.  My 
heart  may  break  in  the  effort,  but  it  shall  reward  her.  You,  Con- 
stance, in  the  pride  of  your  lofty  station,  your  strengthened  mind, 
your  regulated  virtue  (fenced  in  by  the  hundred  barriers  of  cus- 
tom), you  cannot,  perhaps,  conceive  how  pure  and  devoted  the 
soul  of  this  poor  girl  is  !  She  is  not  one  whom  I  could  heap  riches 
upon  and  leave — my  love  is  all  the  riches  she  knows.  Earth  has 


GODOLPHIN.  191 

not  a  consolation  or  a  recompense  for  the  loss  of  my  affection  : 
and  even  Heaven  itself  she  has  never  learned  to  think  of,  except 
as  a  place  in  which  we  shall  be  united  forever.  As  I  write  this  I 
know  that  she  is  sitting  afar  off  and  alone,  and  thinking  only  of 
one  whose  whole  soul,  fated  and  accursed  as  he  is,  is  maddened 
by  the  love  of  another.  My  letters,  her  only  comfort,  have  been 
cold  and  few  of  late  :  I  know  how  they  have  wrung  her  heart :  I 
picture  to  myself  her  solitude,  her  sadness,  her  unfriended  youth, 
her  ardent  mind,  which,  not  enriched  by  culture,  clings,  feeds, 
lives  only  on  one  idea.  Before  you  receive  this,  I  shall  be  on  the 
road  to  her.  Never  again  will  I  risk  the  temptation  I  have  undergone. 
I  am  not  a  vain  man;  I  do  not  deceive  myself;  I  do  not  imagine, 
I  do  not  insult  you  by  believing,  that  you  will  long  or  bitterly 
feel  my  loss.  I  have  loved  you  far  better  than  you  have  loved  me, 
and  you  have  uncounted  channels  for  your  bright  hopes  and  your 
various  ambition.  You  love  the  world,  and  the  world  is  at  your 
feet !  And  in  remembering  me  now,  you  may  think  you  have  cause 
for  indignation.  Why,  with  the  knowledge  of  a  tie  that  forbade  me 
to  hope  for  you,  why  did  I  linger  round  you?  Why  did  I  give 
vent  to  any  word,  or  license  to  any  look,  that  told  you  I  loved 
you  still  ?  Why,  above  all,  on  that  fated  yesterday,  when  we 
stood  alone  surrounded  by  the  waters, — why  did  I  dare  forget 
myself — why  clasp  you  to  my  breast — why  utter  the  assurance  of 
that  love  which  was  a  mockery,  if  I  were  not  about  solemnly  to 
record  it? 

' '  This  you  will  ask ;  and  if  you  are  not  satisfied  with  the 
answer,  your  pride  will  clothe  my  memory  with  resentment.  Be 
it  so — yet  hear  me  !  Constance,  when,  in  my  first  youth,  at  the 
time  when  the  wax  was  yet  soft,  and  the  tree  might  yet  be  bent ; 
when  I  laid  my  heart  and  my  future  lot  at  your  feet ;  when  you, 
at  the  dictates  of  a  worldly  and  cold  ambition  (disguise  the  name 
as  you  will,  the  reality  is  the  same),  threw  me  back  on  the  soli- 
tary desert  of  life ;  when  you  rejected — forsook  me — do  you  think 
that  although  I  loved  you  still,  there  was  no 'anger  mingled  with 
the  love  !  We  met  again  :  but  what  years  of  wasted  existence  ; 
of  dimmed  hope,  of  deadened  emotion,  had  passed  over  me  since 
then  !  And  who  had  thus  marked  them  ?  You  !  Do  you  wonder, 
then,  that  something  of  human  pride  asked  for  human  vengeance? 
Yes  !  I  pined  for  some  triumph  in  my  turn :  I  longed  to  try 
whether  I  was  yet  forgotten  ;  whether  the  heart  which  stung  me 
had  been  stung  also  in  the  wound  that  it  inflicted.  Was  not  this 
natural  ?  Ask  yourself,  and  blame  me  if  you  can.  But  by  degrees 
— as  I  gazed  upon  a  beauty,  and  listened  to  a  voice,  softer  in 
their  character  than  of  old  ;  as  I  felt  that  you  would  not  deny  me 


192  GODOLPHIX. 

retribution ;  this  selfish  desire  for  revenge  died  away,  and,  by 
degrees,  all  emotions  were  merged  into  one — unconquered,  uncon- 
querable love.  And  can  you  blame  me,  if  then — traitor  to  my- 
self as  to  you — I  lingered  on  the  spot  ?  If  I  had  many  struggles  to 
endure  before  I  could  resolve  on  the  sacrifice  I  now  make  ?  Alas  ! 
it  has  cost  me  much  to  be  just.  Can  you  blame  me  if  at  all  times 
I  could  not  control  my  words  and  looks?  Nay,  even  in  our  last 
meeting,  when  I  was  maddened  by  the  thought  that  we  were 
about  to  part  forever ;  when  we  stood  alone ;  when  no  eye  was 
near  ;  when  you  clung  to  me  in  delicious  timidity  ;  when  your 
breath  was  on  my  cheek ;  when  the  heaving  of  your  heart  was 
heard  by  mine  ;  when  my  hand  touched  that  which  could  give  me 
all  the  world  in  itself ;  when  my  arm  encircled  that  glorious  and 
divine  shape — O  Heaven  !  can  you  blame  me ;  can  you  wonder  if 
I  was  transported  beyond  myself;  if  conscience,  reason,  all  were 
forgotten,  and  I  thought — felt — lived — but  for  the  moment  and 
for  you  ?  No,  you  will  feel  for  the  weakness  of  nature ;  you  will 
not  judge  me  harshly. 

"And  why  should  you  rob  me  of  the  remembrance  of  that 
brief  moment — that  wild  embrace?  How  often  shall  I  recall  it ! 
How  often  when  the  light  step  of  her  to  whom  I  return  glides 
around  me,  shall  I  cheat  myself,  and  think  it  yours:  when  I  feel 
her  breath  at  night,  shall  I  not  start  and  dream  it  comes  from 
your  lips?  And  in  returning  her  unconscious  caress,  let  me — let 
me  fancy  it  is  you  who  whisper  me  the  assurances  of  unutterable 
love !  Forgive  me,  Constance,  my  yet  adored  Constance,  whom 
I  shall  never  see  more,  for  those  wild  words — this  momentary 
weakness.  Farewell !  Whatever  becomes  of  me,  may  God  give 
you  all  his  blessings ! 

' '  One  word  more — no,  I  will  not  close  this  letter  yet !  You 
remember  that  you  once  gave  me  a  flower — years  ago.  I  have 
preserved  its  leaves  to  this  day ;  but  I  will  give  no  indulgence  to 
a  folly  that  will  now  wrong  you,  and  be  unworthy  of  myself.  I 
will  send  you  back  those  leaves :  let  them  plead  for  me  as  the 
memories  of  former  days.  I  must  break  off  now,  for  I  can  liter- 
ally write  no  more.  I  must  go  forth  and  recover  my  self-command. 
And  oh  !  may  she  whom  I  seek  to-morrow ;  whose  unsuspecting 
heart,  admonished  by  temptation,  I  will  watch  over,  guide,  and 
shield,  far,  far  more  zealously  than  I  have  yet  done — never  know 
what  it  has  cost  me,  not  to  abandon  and  betray  her." 

And  Lucilla  read  over  every  word  of  this  letter  !  How  wholly 
impossible  it  is  for  language  to  express  the  agony,  the  hcpelesss, 
irremediable  despair  that  deepened  within  her  as  she  proceeded 


GODOLPHIN.  193 

to  the  end  !  Everything  that  life  had,  or  could  ever  have  had,  for 
her,  of  common  peace  or  joy,  was  blasted  forever  !  As  she  came 
to  the  last  word,  she  bowed  her  head  in  silence  over  the  writing, 
and  felt  as  if  some  mighty  rock  had  fallen  upon  her  heart,  and 
crushed  it  to  dust.  Had  the  letter  breathed  but  one  unkind, 
one  slighting  expression  of  her,  it  would  have  been  some  comfort, 
some  rallying  point,  however  forlorn  and  wretched ;  but  this  cruel 
tenderness — this  bitter  generosity ! 

And  before  she  had  read  that  letter,  how  joyously,  how  breath- 
lessly, she  had  anticipated  rushing  to  her  lover's  breast !  It  seems 
incredible  that  the  space  of  a  few  minutes  should  suffice  to  blight 
a  whole  existence — blacken,  without  a  ray  of  hope,  an  entire 
future  ! 

She  was  aroused  by  the  sound  of  steps,  though  in  another 
apartment;  she  would  not  now  have  met  Godolphin  for  worlds; 
the  thought  of  his  return  alone  gave  her  the  power  of  motion. 
She  thrust  the  fatal  letter  into  her  bosom;  and  then,  in  characters 
surprisingly  distinct  and  clear,  she  wrote  her  name,  and  placed 
that  writing  in  the  stead  of  the  epistle  she  took  away.  She  judged 
rightly  that  the  single  name  would  suffice  to  say  all  she  could  not 
then  say.  Having  done  this,  she  rose,  left  the  room,  and  stole 
softly  and  unperceived  into  the  open  street. 

Unconscious  and  careless  whither  she  went,  she  hurried  on, 
her  eyes  bent  on  the  ground,  and  concealing  her  form  and  face 
with  her  long  mantle.  The  streets  at  Rome  are  not  thronged  as 
with  us :  nor  does  there  exist,  in  a  city  consecrated  by  so  many 
sublime  objects,  that  restless  and  vulgar  curiosity  which  torments 
the  English  public.  Each  lives  in  himself,  not  in  his  neighbor. 
The  moral  air  of  Rome  is  Indifference. 

Lucilla,  therefore,  hurried  along  unmolested  and  unobserved, 
until  at  length  her  feet  failed  her,  and  she  sank  exhausted, 
but  still  unconscious  of  her  movements  and  of  all  around,  upon 
one  of  the  scattered  fragments  of  ancient  pride  that  at  every  turn 
are  visible  in  the  streets  of  Rome.  The  place  was  quiet  and  soli- 
tary, and  darkened  by  the  shadows  of  a  palace  that  reared  itself 
close  beside.  She  sat  down  ;  and  shrouding  her  face  as  it  drooped 
over  her  breast,  endeavored  to  collect  her  thoughts.  Presently 
the  sound  of  a  guitar  was  heard ;  and  along  the  street  came  a  little 
group  of  the  itinerant  musicians  who  invest  modern  Italy  with  its 
yet  living  air  of  poetry :  the  reality  is  gone,  but  the  spirit  lingers. 
They  stopped  opposite  a  small  house :  and  Lucilla,  looking  up, 
saw  the  figure  of  a  young  girl  placing  a  light  at  the  window  as  a 
signal  well  known,  and  then  she  glided  away.  Meanwhile,  the 
lover,  (who  had  accompanied  the  musicians,  and  seemed  in  no 

'3 


194  GODOLPHIN. 

very  elevated  rank  of  life)  stood  bareheaded  beneath  ;  and  in  his 
upward  look  there  was  a  devotion,  a  fondness,  a  respect,  that 
brought  back  to  Lucilla  all  the  unsparing  bitterness  of  contrast 
and  recollection.  And  now  the  serenade  began.  The  air  was 
inexpressibly  soft  and  touching,  and  the  words  were  steeped  in 
that  vague  melancholy  which  is  inseparable  from  the  tenderness, 
if  not  from  the  passion,  of  love.  Lucilla  listened  involuntarily, 
and  the  charm  slowly  wrought  its  effect.  The  hardness  and  con- 
fusion of  her  mind  melted  gradually  away  ;  and  as  the  song  ended 
she  turned  aside  and  burst  into  tears  :  "  Happy,  happy  girl,"  she 
murmured,  "she  is  loved  ! " 

Here  let  us  drop  the  curtain  upon  Lucilla.  Often,  O  Reader ! 
shalt  thou  recall  this  picture ;  often  shalt  thou  see  her  before  thee 
— alone  and  broken-hearted — weeping  in  the  twilight  streets  of 
Rome! 

CHAPTER  XLIII. 

LOVE  STRONG  AS  DEATH,  AND  NOT  LESS  BITTER. 

WHEN  Godolphin  returned  home  the  door  was  open,  as  Lucilla 
had  left  it,  and  he  went  at  once  into  his  apartment.  He  hastened 
to  the  table  on  which  he  had  left,  with  the  negligence  arising 
from  the  emotions  of  the  moments,  the  letter  to  Constance, — the 
paper  on  which  Lucilla  had  written  her  name  alone  met  his  eye. 
While  yet  stunned  and  amazed,  his  servant  and  Lucilla' s  entered  : 
in  a  few  moments  he  learned  all  they  had  to  tell  him ;  the  rest 
Lucilla's  handwriting  did  indeed  sufficiently  explain.  He  com- 
prehended all ;  and,  in  a  paroxysm  of  alarm  and  remorse,  he  dis- 
persed his  servants,  and  hurried,  himself,  in  search  for  her.  He 
went  to  the  house  of  her  relations  ;  they  had  not  seen  or  heard 
of  her.  It  was  now  night,  and  every  obstacle  in  the  way  of  his 
search  presented  itself.  Not  a  clue  could  be  traced ;  or,  some- 
times following  a  description  that  seemed  to  him  characteristic, 
he  chased,  and  found  some  wanderer — how  unlike  Lucilla  !  To- 
wards daybreak  he  returned  home,  after  a  vain  and  weary  search ; 
and  his  only  comfort  was  in  learning  from  her  attendant  that  she 
had  about  her  a  sum  of  money  which  he  knew  would  in  Italy  al- 
ways purchase  safety  and  attention.  Yet,  alone,  at  night,  in  the 
streets — so  utter  a  stranger  as  she  was  to  the  world  ;  so  young  and 
so  lovely — he  shuddered,  he  gasped  for  breath  at  the  idea.  Might 
she  destroy  herself?  That  hideous  question  forced  itself  upon 
him  ;  he  could  not  exclude  it :  he  trembled  when  he  recalled  her 
impassioned  and  keen  temper ;  and  when,  in  remembering  the 


GODOLPHIN.  IQ5 

tone  and  words  of  his  letter  to  Constance,  he  felt  how  desperate 
a  pang  every  sentence  must  have  inflicted  upon  her.  And,  indeed, 
even  his  imagination  could  not  equal  the  truth,  when  it  attempted 
to  sound  the  depths  of  her  wounded  feelings.  He  only  return- 
ed home  to  sally  out  again.  He  now  employed  the  police,  and 
those  most  active  and  vigilant  agents  that  at  Rome  are  willing 
to  undertake  all  enterprises;  he  could  not  but  feel  assured  of  dis- 
covering her. 

Still,  however,  noon,  evening  came  on,  and  no  tidings.  As  he 
once  more  returned  home,  in  the  faint  hope  that  some  intelligence 
might  await  him  there,  his  servant  hurried  eagerly  out  to  him 
with  a  letter — it  was  from  Lucilla  and  it  was  worthy  of  her :  I 
give  it  to  the  reader. 

LUCILLA'S  LETTER. 

' '  I  have  read  your  letter  to  another  !  Are  not  these  words  suf- 
ficient to  tell  you  all  ?  All  ?  No  !  you  never,  never,  never  can 
tell  how  crushed  and  broken  my  heart  is.  Why !  Because  you 
are  a  man,  and  because  you  have  never  loved  as  I  loved.  Yes, 
Godolphin,  I  knew  that  I  was  not  one  whom  you  could  love.  I 
am  a  poor,  ignorant,  untutored  girl,  with  nothing  at  my  heart  but 
a  great  world  of  love  which  I  could  never  tell.  Thou  saidst  I 
could  not  comprehend  thee :  alas  !  how  much  was  there — is  there 
— in  my  nature,  in  my  feelings,  which  have  been,  and  ever  will 
be,  unfathomable  to  thy  sight ! 

"  But  all  this  matters  not;  the  tie  between  us  is  eternally  broken. 
Go,  dear,  dear  Godolphin  !  link  thyself  to  that  happier  other 
one — seemingly  so  much  more  thine  equal  than  the  lowly  and 
uncultivated  Lucilla.  Grieve  not  for  me;  you  have  been  kind, 
most  kind,  to  me.  You  have  taken  away  hope,  but  you  have 
given  me  pride  in  its  stead  ;  the  blow  which  has  crushed  my  heart 
has  given  strength  to  my  mind.  Were  you  and  I  left  alone  on 
the  earth,  we  must  still  be  apart ;  I  could  never,  never  live  with 
you  again ;  my  world  is  not  your  world ;  when  our  hearts  have 
ceased  to  be  in  common,  what  of  union  is  there  left  to  us  ?  Yet 
it  would  be  something  if,  since  the  future  is  shut  out  from  me,  you 
had  not  also  deprived  me  of  the  past :  I  have  not  even  the  privi- 
lege of  looking  back  !  What !  All  the  while  my  heart  was  lavish- 
ing itself  upon  thee ;  all  the  while  I  had  no  other  thought,  no 
other  dream  but  thee ;  all  the  while  I  sat  by  thy  side,  and 
watched  thee,  hanging  on  thy  wish,  striving  to  foresee  thy  thoughts ; 
all  the  while  I  was  the  partner  of  thy  days,  and  at  night  my  bosom 
was  thy  pillow,  and  I  could  not  sleep  from  the  bliss  of  thinking 
thee  so  near  me  ;  thy  heart  was  then  indeed  away  from  me ;  thy 


196  GODOLPHIN. 

thoughts  estranged  ;  I  was  to  thee  only  an  encumbrance — a  bur- 
den, from  which  thy  sigh  was  to  be  free  !  Can  I  ever  look  back, 
then,  to  those  hours  we  spent  together  ?  All  that  vast  history  of 
the  past  is  but  one  record  of  bitterness  and  shame.  And  yet  I 
cannot  blame  thee;  it  were  something  if  I  could;  in  proportion 
as  you  loved  me  not,  you  were  kind  and  generous ;  and  God  will 
bless  you  for  that  kindness  to  the  poor  orphan.  A  harsh  word,  a 
threatening  glance,  I  never  had  the  affliction  to  feel  from  thee. 
Tracing  the  blighted  past,  I  am  only  left  to  sadden  at  that  gentle- 
ness which  never  came  from  love  ! 

"Godolphin — I  repeat  the  prayer  in  all  humbleness  and  sincer- 
ity— go  to  her  whom  thou  lovest,  perhaps  as  I  loved  thee ;  go  and 
in  your  happiness  I  shall  feel  at  last  something  of  happiness  myself. 
We  part  forever,  but  there  is  no  unkindness  between  us  ;  there  is  no 
reproach  that  one  can  make  against  the  other.  If  I  have  sinned, 
it  has  been  against  Heaven  and  not  thee ;  and  thou — why,  even 
against  Heaven  mine  was  all  the  fault — the  rashness — the  mad- 
ness !  You  will  return  to  your  native  land ;  to  that  proud  Eng- 
land, of  which  I  have  so  often  questioned  you,  and  which,  even  in 
your  answers,  seems  to  me  so  cold  and  desolate  a  spot, — a  land  so 
hostile  to  love.  There,  in  your  new  ties,  you  will  learn  new  ob- 
jects, and  you  will  be  too  busy,  and  loo  happy,  for  your  thoughts 
to  turn  to  me  again.  Too  happy  ?  No,  I  wish  I  could  think  you 
would  be ;  but  I,  whom  you  deny  to  possess  sympathies  with  you 
— I  have  at  least  penetrated  so  far  into  your  heart  as  to  fear  that, 
come  what  may,  you  will  never  find  the  happiness  you  ask.  You 
exact  too  much,  you  dream  too  fondly,  not  to  be  discontented 
with  the  truth.  What  has  happened  to  me  must  happen  to  my 
rival — will  happen  to  you  throughout  life.  Your  being  is  in  one 
world,  your  soul  is  in  another.  Alas  !  how  foolishly  I  run  on,  as 
if  seeking  in  your  nature,  and  not  circumstances,  the  blow  that 
separates  us. 

"I  yhall  hasten  to  a  conclusion.  I  have  gained  a  refuge  in  this 
convent:  seek  me  not,  follow  me  not,  I  implore,  I  adjure  thee; 
it  can  serve  no  purpose.  I  would  not  see  thee  ;  the  veil  is  already 
drawn  between  thy  world  and  me,  and  it  only  remains,  in  kind- 
ness and  in  charity,  to  bid  each  other  farewell.  Farewell,  then  ! 
I  think  I  am  now  with  thee ;  I  think  my  lips  have  breathed  aside 
thy  long  hair,  and  cling  to  thy  fair  temples  with  a  sister's — that 
word,  at  least,  is  left  me — a  sister's  kiss.  As  we  stood  together, 
at  the  gray  dawn,  when  we  last  parted ;  as  then,  in  sorrow  and 
in  tears,  I  hid  my  face  in  thy  bosom  ;  as  then,  unconscious  of 
what  was  to  come,  I  poured  forth  my  assurances  of  faithful,  un- 
swerving thought ;  as  thrice  thou  didst  tear  thyself  from  me  and 


GODOLPHIN.  197 

didst  thrice  return  ;  and  as,  through  the  comfortless  mists  of 
morn,  I  gazed  after  thee,  and  fancied  for  hours  that  thy  last  words 
yet  rang  in  my  ear :  so  now,  but  with  different  feelings,  I  once 
more  bid  thee  farewell — farewell  forever  !  " 

CHAPTER  XLIV. 

GODOLPHIN. 

"  No,  signer,  she  will  not  see  you  !  " 

"You  have  given  my  note — given  that  ring?" 

"I  have,  and  she  still  refuses." 

' '  Refuses  ?  And  is  that  all  the  answer  ?  No  line  to — to  soften 
the  reply  ?  ' ' 

"Signor,  I  have  spoken  all  my  message." 

"Cruel,  hard-hearted!  May  I  call  again,  think  you,  with  a 
better  success?  " 

"The  convent,  at  stated  times,  is  open  to  strangers,  Signer; 
but  so  far  as  the  young  Signora  is  concerned,  I  feel  assured,  from 
her  manner  that  your  visits  will  be  in  vain." 

"Ay — ay,  I  understand  you,  madam;  you  wish  to  entice  her 
from  the  wicked  world ;  to  suffer  not  human  friendships  to  dis- 
turb her  thoughts.  Good  Heavens !  and  can  she,  so  young,  so 
ardent,  dream  of  taking  the  veil?" 

"  She  does  not  dream  of  it,"  said  the  nun,  coolly;  "she  has 
no  intention  of  remaining  here  long." 

"  Befriend  me,  I  beseech  you!"  cried  Godolphin,  eagerly: 
< '  restore  her  to  me ;  let  me  only  come  once  to  her  within  these 
walls,  and  I  will  enrich  your " 

' '  Signer,  good  -day. ' ' 

Dejected,  melancholy,  and  yet  enraged  amidst  all  his  sorrow, 
Godolphin  returned  to  Rome.  Lucilla's  letter  rankled  in  his 
heart  like  the  barb  of  a  broken  arrow ;  but  the  stern  resolve  with 
which  she  had  refused  to  see  him  appeared  to  the  pride  that 
belongs  to  manhood  a  harsh  and  unfeeling  insult.  He  knew  not 
that  poor  Lucilla's  eyes  had  watched  him  from  the  walls  of  the 
convent,  and  that  while,  for  his  sake  more  than  her  own,  she  had 
refused  the  meeting  he  prayed  for,  she  had  not  the  resolution  to 
deny  herself  the  luxury  of  gazing  on  him  once  more. 

He  reached  Rome :  he  found  a  note  on  his  table  from  Lady 
Charlotte  Deerham,  saying  she  had  heard  it  was  his  intention  to 
leave  Rome,  and  begging  him  to  receive  from  her  that  evening 
her  adieux.  "Lady  Erpingham  will  be  with  me,"  concluded 
the  note. 


I9&  GODOLPH1N. 

This  brought  a  new  train  of  ideas.  Since  Lucilla's  flight,  all 
thought  but  of  Lucilla  had  been  expelled  from  Godolphin's  mind. 
We  have  seen  how  his  letter  to  Lady  Erpingham  miscarried :  he 
had  written  no  other.  How  strange  to  Constance  must  seem  his 
conduct,  after  the  scene  of  the  avowal  in  the  Siren's  Cave  :  no 
excuse  on  the  one  hand,  no  explanation  on  the  other ;  and  now 
what  explanation  should  he  give  ?  There  was  no  longer  a  neces- 
sity, for  it  was  no  longer  honesty  and  justice  to  fly  from  the  bliss 
that  might  await  him — the  love  of  his  early-worshipped  Con- 
stance. But  could  he,  with  a  heart  yet  bleeding  from  the  violent 
rupture  of  one  tie,  form  a  new  one?  Agitated,  restless,  self- 
reproachful,  bewildered,  and  uncertain,  he  could  not  bear 
thoughts  that  demanded  answers  to  a  thousand  questions ;  he 
flung  from  his  cheerless  room,  and  hastened,  with  a  feverish  pulse 
and  burning  temples,  to  Lady  Charlotte  Deerham's. 

''Good  Heavens!  how  ill  you  look,  Mr.  Godolphin  !  "  cried 
the  hostess,  involuntarily. 

.  "  111 !  ha  !  ha  !  I  never  was  better ;  but  I  have  just  returned 
from  a  long  journey  :  I  have  not  touched  food  nor  felt  sleep  for  three 
days  and  nights.  I !  Ha,  ha  !  no,  I'm  not  ill ;  "  and,  with  an 
eye  bright  with  gathering  delirium,  Godolphin  glared  around 
him. 

Lady  Charlotte  drew  back  and  shuddered ;  Godolphin  felt  a 
cool,  soft  hand  laid  on  his ;  he  turned,  and  the  face  of  Con- 
stance, full  of  anxious  and  wondering  pity,  was  bent  upon  him. 
He  stood  arrested  for  one  moment,  and  then,  seizing  that  hand, 
pressed  it  to  his  lips,  his  heart,  and  burst  suddenly  into  tears. 
That  paroxysm  saved  his  life ;  for  days  after  he  was  insensible. 

CHAPTER  XLV. 

THE  DECLARATION. — THE  APPROACHING   NUPTIALS. — IS  THE  IDEAL- 
IST CONTENTED  ? 

As  Godolphin  returned  to  health,  and,  day  after  day,  the  pres- 
ence of  Constance,  her  soft  tones,  her  deep  eyes,  grew  on  him, 
renewing  their  ancient  spells,  the  reader  must  perceive  that  bourne 
to  which  events  necessarily  tended.  For  some  weeks  not  a  word 
that  alluded  to  the  Siren's  Cave  was  uttered  by  either ;  but  when 
that  allusion  came  at  last  from  Godolphin's  lips,  the  next  moment 
he  was  kneeling  beside  Constance,  her  hand  surrendered  to  his, 
and  her  proud  cheek  all  bathed  in  the  blushes  of  sixteen. 

"  And  so,"  said  Saville,  "  you,  Percy  Godolphin,  are  at  last  the 


GODOLPHIN.  *99 

accepted  lover  of  Constance,  Countess  of  Erpingham.  When  is 
the  wedding  to  be  ?" 

"I  know  not,"  replied  Godolphin3  musingly. 

"  Well,  I  almost  envy  you;  you  will  be  very  happy  for  six 
weeks,  and  that's  something  in  this  disagreeable  world.  Yet, 
now  I  look  on  you,  I  grow  reconciled  to  myself  again ;  you  do 
not  seem  so  happy  as  that  I,  Augustus  Saville,  should  envy  you 
while  my  digestion  lasts.  What  are  you  thinking  of  ?  " 

"  Nothing,"  replied  Godolphin,  vacantly  ;  the  words  of  Lucilla 
were  weighing  at  his  heart,  like  a  prophecy  working  towards  its 
fulfilment,  "  Come  what  may,  you  will  never  find  the  happiness 
you  ask  :  you  exact  too  much." 

At  that  moment  Lady  Erpingham's  page  entered  with  a  note 
from  Constance,  and  a  present  of  flowers.  No  one  ever  wrote 
half  so  beautifully,  so  spiritually,  as  Constance;  and  to  Percy  the 
wit  was  so  intermingled  with  the  tenderness  ! 

"No,"  said  he,  burying  his  lips  among  the  flowers;  "no!  I 
discard  the  foreboding ;  with  you  I  must  be  happy  !  "  But  con- 
science, still  unsilenced,  whispered — Lucilla  ! 

The  marriage  was  to  take  place  at  Rome.  The  day  was  fixed  ; 
and,  owing  to  Constance's  rank,  beauty,  and  celebrity,  the  news 
of  the  event  created  throughout  "  the  English  in  Italy  "  no  small 
sensation.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  gossip,  of  course,  on  the 
occasion  ;  and  some  of  this  gossip  found  its  way  to  the  haughty 
ears  of  Constance.  It  was  said  that  she  had  made  a  strange 
match;  that  it  was  a  curious  weakness,  in  one  so  proud  and  bril- 
liant, to  look  no  loftier  than  a  private  and  not  very  wealthy  gentle- 
man ;  handsome,  indeed,  and  reputed  clever,  but  one  who  had 
never  distinguished  himself  in  anything — who  never  would  ! 

Constance  was  alarmed  and  stung,  not  at  the  vulgar  accusation, 
the  paltry  sneer,  but  at  the  prophecy  relating  to  Godolphin  : 
"  He  had  never  distinguished  himself  in  anything — he  never 
would."  Rank,  wealth,  power,  Constance  felt  these  she  wanted 
not ;  these  she  could  command  of  herself;  but  she  felt  also  that  a 
nobler  vanity  of  her  nature  required  that  the  man  of  her  mature 
and  second  choice  should  not  be  one,  in  repute,  of  that  mere 
herd,  above  whom,  in  reality,  his  genius  so  eminently  exalted 
him.  She  deemed  it  essential  to  her  future  happiness  that  Godol- 
phin's  ambition  should  be  aroused,  that  he  should  share  her  ardor 
for  those  great  objects  that  she  felt  would  forever  be  dear  to  her. 

"I  love  Rome!  "  said  she,  passionately,  one  day,  as,  accom- 
panied by  Godolphin,  she  left  the  Vatican  ;  "I  feel  my  soul  grow 
larger  amidst  its  ruins.  Elsewhere,  through  Italy,  we  live  in  the 
present,  but  here  in  the  past," 


200  GODOLPHIN. 

"  Say  not  that  that  is  the  better  life,  dear  Constance  ;  the  pres- 
ent— can  we  surpass  it?" 

Constance  blushed,  and  thanked  her  lover  with  a  look  that  told 
him  he  was  understood. 

"  Yet,"  said  she,  returning  to  the  subject,  "who  can  breathe 
the  air  that  is  rife  with  glory,  and  not  be  intoxicated  with  emula- 
tion? Ah,  Percy  !  " 

"Ah,  Constance  !  And  what  wouldst  thou  have  of  me?  Is  it 
not  glory  enough  to  be  thy  lover  ?  " 

"  Let  the  world  be  as  proud  of  my  choice  as  I  am." 

Godolphin  frowned  ;  he  penetrated  in  those  words  to  Con- 
stance's secret  meaning.  Accustomed  to  be  an  idol  from  his  boy- 
hood, he  resented  the  notion  that  he  had  need  of  exertion  to  render 
him  worthy  even  of  Constance;  and  sensible  that  it  might  be 
thought  he  had  made  an  alliance  beyond  his  just  pretensions,  he 
was  doubly  tenacious  as  to  his  own  claims.  Godolphin  frowned 
then,  and  turned  away  in  silence.  Constance  sighed;  she  felt 
that  she  might  not  renew  the  subject.  But,  after  a  pause,  Godol- 
phin himself  continued  it. 

"  Constance,"  said  he,  in  a  low  firm  voice,  "  let  us  understand 
each  other.  You  are  all  to  me  in  the  world ;  fame,  and  honor, 
and  station,  and  happiness.  Am  I,  also,  that  all  to  you?  If 
there  be  any  thought  at  your  heart  which  whispers  you,  '  you 
might  have  served  your  ambition  better  ;  you  have  done  wrong  in 
yielding  to  love  and  love  only,' — then,  Constance,  pause;  it  is 
not  too  late." 

"  Do  I  deserve  this,  Percy  ?  " 

"You  drop  words  sometimes,"  answered  Godolphin,  "that 
seem  to  indicate  that  you  think  the  world  may  cavil  at  your 
choice,  and  that  some  exertion  on  my  part  is  necessary  to  main- 
tain your  dignity.  Constance,  need  I  say,  again  and  again,  that 
I  adore  the  very  dust  you  tread  on  ?  But  I  have  a  pride,  a  self- 
respect,  beneath  which  I  cannot  stoop ;  if  you  really  think  or  feel 
this,  I  will  not  condescend  to  receive  even  happiness  from  you : 
let  us  part." 

Constance  saw  his  lips  white  and  quivering  as  he  spoke ;  her 
heart  smote  her,  her  pride  vanished ;  she  sank  on  his  shoulder, 
and  forgot  even  ambition  ;  nay,  while  she  inly  murmured  at  his 
sentiment,  she  felt  it  breathed  a  sort  of  nobility  that  she  could 
not  but  esteem.  She  strove  then  to  lull  at  rest  all  her  more 
worldly  anxieties  for  the  future ;  to  hope  that,  cast  on  the  exciting 
stage  of  English  ambition,  Godolphin  must  necessarily  be  stirred 
despite  his  creed ;  and  if  she  sometimes  doubted,  sometimes 
despaired  of  this,  she  felt  at  least  that  his  presence  had  become 


GODOLPHIN.  20  r 

dearer  to  her  than  all  things.  Nay,  she  checked  her  own  enthusi- 
asm, her  own  worship  of  fame,  since  they  clashed  with  his  opin- 
ions ;  so  marvellously  and  insensibly  had  Love  bowed  down  the 
proud  energies  and  the  lofty  soul  of  the  daughter  of  John  Vernon. 

CHAPTER  XL VI. 

THE  BRIDALS. — THE  ACCIDENT. — THE  FIRST  LAWFUL  POSSESSION  OF 

LOVE. 

IT  was  the  morning  on  which  Constance  and  Godolphin  were 
to  be  married  ;  it  had  been  settled  that  they  were  to  proceed  the 
same  day  towards  Florence  ;  and  Constance  was  at  her  toilette 
when  her  woman  laid  beside  her  a  large  bouquet  of  flowers. 

"From  Percy — from  Mr.  Godolphin,  I  mean?"  she  asked, 
taking  them  up. 

"  No,  my  lady  ;  a  young  woman  outside  the  palace  gave  them 
me,  and  bade  me  in  such  pretty  English  be  sure  to  give  them  to 
your  ladyship ;  and  when  I  offered  her  money,  she  would  not 
take  anything,  my  lady." 

"The  Italians  are  a  courteous  people,"  replied  Constance; 
and  she  placed  the  flowers  in  her  bosom. 

As,  after  the  ceremony,  Godolphin  assisted  his  bride  into  the 
carriage,  a  girl,  wrapped  in  a  large  cloak,  pressed  forward  for  a 
moment.  Godolphin  had  in  that  moment  turned  his  head  to  give 
some  order  to  his  servant,  and  with  the  next  the  girl  had  sunk 
back  into  the  throng  that  was  drawn  around  the  carriage — yet  not 
before  Constance  had  heard  her  murmur  in  a  deep,  admiring,  yet 
sorrowful  tone :  "  Beautiful !  how  beautiful  ! — Ah  me  !  " 

"Did  you  observe  what  beautiful  eyes  that  young  girl  had!  " 
asked  Constance,  as  the  carriage  whirled  off. 

"What  girl?     I  saw  nothing  but  you  !  " 

"  Hark  !  there  is  a  noise  behind." 

Godolphin  looked  out ;  the  crowd  seemed  collected  round  one 
person. 

"  Only  a  young  woman  fainted,  sir  !  "  said  his  servant  seated 
behind.  "  She  fell  down  in  a  fit  just  before  the  horses  ;  but  they 
started  aside,  and  did  not  hurt  her." 

"That  is  fortunate:  "  said  Godolphin,  reseating  himself  by  his 
new  bride ;  "  drive  on  faster." 

At  Florence  Godolphin  revealed  to  Constance  the  outline  of 
Lucilla's  history,  and  Constance  shared  somewhat  of  the  feelings 
with  which  he  told  it. 

"  I  left,"  said  he,  "  in  the  hands  of  the  abbess,  a  s.um  to  be  ea- 


202  GODOLPHIN. 

tirely  at  Lucilla's  control,  whether  she  stay  in  the  convent  or  not, 
and  which  will  always  secure  to  her  an  independence.  But  I  con- 
fess I  should  like  now,  once  more  to  visit  the  convent,  and  learn 
on  what  fate  she  has  decided." 

"You  would  do  well,  dear  Percy,"  replied  Constance,  who 
from  her  high  and  starred  sphere  could  stoop  to  no  vulgar  jeal- 
ousy ;  "  indeed,  I  think,  you  could  do  no  less." 

And  Godolphin  covered  those  generous  lips  with  the  sweet 
kisses  in  which  esteem  begins  to  mingle  with  passion.  What  has 
the  Earth  like  that  first  fresh  union  of  two  hearts  long  separated, 
and  now  blended  forever  !  However  close  the  sympathy  between 
woman  and  her  lover — however  each  thinks  to  have  learned  the 
other — what  a  world  is  there  left  ^learned,  until  marriage  brings 
all  those  charming  confidences,  that  holy  and  sweet  intercourse, 
which  leave  no  separate  interest,  no  undivided  thought !  But 
there  is  one  thing  that  distinguishes  the  conversation  of  young 
married  people  from  that  of  lovers  on  a  less  sacred  footing — they 
talk  of  the  future  !  Other  lovers  talk  rather  of  the  past ;  an  un- 
certainty pervades  their  hereafter ;  they  feel,  they  recoil  from,  it ; 
they  are  sensible  that  their  plans  are  not  one  and  indivisible.  But 
married  people  are  always  laying  out  the  "  To  COME  ";  always 
talking  over  their  plans :  this  often  takes  something  away  from 
the  tenderness  of  affection,  but  how  much  it  adds  to  its  enjoy- 
ment ! 

Seated  by  each  other,  and  looking  on  the  silver  Arno,  Godol- 
phin and  Constance,  hand  clasped  in  hand,  surrendered  them- 
selves to  the  contemplation  of  their  future  happiness.  ' '  And 
what  would  be  your  favorite  mode  of  life,  dear  Percy?  " 

"Why,  I  have  now  no  schemings  left  me.  Constance.  With 
you  obtained,  I  have  grown  a  dullard,  and  left  off  dreaming.  But 
let  me  see ;  a  house  in  England — you  like  England — some  ten  or 
twenty  miles  from  the  great  Babel :  books,  pictures,  statues,  and 
old  trees  that  shall  put  us  in  mind  of  our  Norman  fathers  who 
planted  them;  above  all,  a  noisy,  clear,  sunny  stream  glid- 
ing amidst  them — deer  on  the  opposite  bank,  half  hidden 
amongst  the  fern ;  and  rooks  overhead  :  a  privilege  for  eccen- 
tricity that  would  allow  one  to  be  social  or  solitary  as  one  pleased  ; 
and  a  house  so  full  of  guests,  that  to  shun  them  all  now  and  then 
would  be  no  affront  to  one." 

"  Well,"  said  Constance,  smiling,  "  go  on." 

"I  have  finished." 

"Finished?" 

"  Yes,  my  fair  Insatiable?    What  more  would  you  have?  " 


GODOLPHIN.  203 

"  Why,  this  is  but  a  country-life  you  have  been  talking  of; 
very  well  in  its  way  for  three  months  in  the  year." 

"  Italy,  then,  for  the  other  nine,"  returned  Godolphin. 

"Ah,  Percy  !  Is  pleasure — mere  pleasure,  vulgar  pleasure — to 
be  really  the  sole  end  and  aim  of  life?  " 

"Assuredly!  " 

"And  action,  enterprise — are  these  as  nothing?" 

Godolphin  was  silent,  but  began  absently  to  throw  pebbles  into 
the  water.  The  action  reminded  Constance  of  the  first  time  she- 
had  ever  seen  him  among  his  ancestral  groves ;  and  she  sighed  as 
she  now  gazed  on  a  brow  from  which  the  effeminacy  and  dream- 
ing of  his  life  had  banished  much  of  its  early  chivalric  and  earn- 
est expression. 

CHAPTER  XLVII. 

NEWS  OF  LUCILLA. 

GODOLPHIN  was  about  one  morning  to  depart  for  the  convent 
to  which  Lucilla  had  flown,  when  a  letter  was  brought  to  him 
from  the  abbess  of  the  convent  herself ;  it  had  followed  him  from 
Rome.  Lucilla  had  left  her  retreat — left  it  three  days  before  Go- 
dolphin's  marriage;  the  abbess  knew  not  whither,  but  believed 
she  intended  to  reside  in  Rome.  She  enclosed  him  a  note  from 
Lucilla,  left  for  him  before  her  departure.  Short  but  character- 
istic ;  it  ran  thus  : 

LUCILLA   TO   GODOLPHIN. 

"  I  can  stay  here  no  longer  ;  my  mind  will  not  submit  to 
quiet ;  this  inactivity  wears  me  to  madness.  Besides,  I  want  to 
see  thy  wife.  I  shall  go  to  Rome  ;  I  shall  witness  thy  wedding  ; 
and  then — ah  !  what  then  ?  Give  me  back,  Godolphin,  oh,  give 
me  back  the  young  pure  heart  I  had  ere  I  loved  you  !  Then,  I 
could  take  joy  in  all  things  : — now  /  But  I  will  not  repine  ;  it  is 
beneath  me.  I,  the  daughter  of  the  stars,  am  no  lovesick  and 
nerveless  minion  of  a  vain  regret ;  my  pride  is  roused  at  last,  and  I 
feel  at  least  the  independence  of  being  alone.  Wild  and  roving 
shall  be  my  future  life  ;  that  lot  which  denies  me  hope,  has  raised 
me  above  all  fear.  Love  makes  us  all  the  woman  ;  love  has  left 
me,  and  something  hard  and  venturous,  something  that  belongs  to 
thy  sex,  has  come  in  its  stead. 

"You  have  left  me  money — I  thank  you — I  thank  you — 1 
thank  you  ;  my  heart  almost  chokes  me  as  I  write  this.  Could 


2O4  GO  DOLPHIN. 

you  think  of  me  so  basely  ?  For  shame,  man  !  if  my  child — our 
child  were  living  (and  oh,  Percy,  she  had  thine  eyes  !  )  I  would 
see  her  starve  inch  by  inch  rather  than  touch  one  doit  of  thy 
bounty  !  But  she  is  dead — thank  God  !  Fear  not  for  me,  I  shall 
not  starve ;  these  hands  can  support  life.  God  bless  thee — loved 
as  thou  still  art !  If,  yea'rs  hence,  I  should  feel  my  end  draw 
near,  I  will  drag  myself  to  thy  country,  and  look  once  more  on 
thy  face  before  I  die." 

Godolphin  sunk  down,  and  covered  his  face  with  his  hands. 
Constance  took  up  the  letter.  "Ay — read  it !  "  said  he  in  a  hol- 
low voice.  She  did  so,  and  when  she  had  finished,  the  proud 
Constance,  struck  by  a  spirit  like  her  own,  bathed  the  letter  in 
her  tears.  This  pleased — this  touched — this  consoled  Godolphin 
more  than  the  most  elaborate  comfortings. 

"  Poor  girl !  "  said  Constance,  through  her  tears,  "  this  must 
not  be  ;  she  must  not  be  left  on  the  wide  world  to  her  own  de- 
spairing heart.  Let  us  both  go  to  Rome,  and  seek  her  out.  I 
will  persuade  her  to  accept  what  she  refuses  from  you." 

Godolphin  pressed  his  wife's  hand,  but  spoke  not.  They  went 
that  day  to  Rome.  Lucilla  had  departed  for  Leghorn,  and  thence 
taken  her  passage  in  a  vessel  bound  to  the  northern  coast  of 
Europe.  Perhaps  she  had  sought  her  father's  land  ?  With  that 
hope,  in  the  absence  of  all  others,  they  attempted  to  console  them- 
selves. 

CHAPTER  XLVIII. 

IN  WHICH  TWO  PERSONS,   PERMANENTLY    UNITED,    DISCOVER   THAT 
NO  TIE  CAN  PRODUCE  UNION  OF  MINDS. 

WEEKS  passed  on,  and,  apparantly,  Godolphin  had  reconciled 
himself  to  the  disappearance  and  precarious  destiny  of  Lucilla. 
It  was  not  in  his  calm  and  brooding  nature  to  show  much  of  emo- 
tion ;  but  there  was  often,  even  in  the  presence  of  Constance,  a 
cloud  on  his  brow,  and  the  fits  of  abstraction  to  which  he  had 
always  been  accustomed  grew  upon  him  more  frequently  than 
ever.  Constance  had  been  inured  for  years  to  the  most  assiduous, 
the  most  devoted  attentions  ;  and  now,  living  much  alone  with 
Godolphin,  she  began  somewhat  to  miss  them;  for  Godolphin 
could  be  a  passionate,  a  romantic,  but  he  could  not  be  a  very 
watchful  lover.  He  had  no  petits  soins.  Few  husbands  have,  it 
is  true ,  nor  is  it  necessary  for  husbands  in  general.  But  Con- 
stance was  not  an  ordinary  woman ;  she  loved  deeply,  but  she 
loved,  according  to  her  nature— as  a  woman  proud  and  exacting 


GODOLPHIN.  205 

muse  love.  For  Godolphin,  her  haughty  step  waxed  timorous  and 
vigilant;  she  always  sprang  forward  the  first  to  meet  him  on  his 
return  from  his  solitary  ramblings,  and  he  smiled  upon  her  with 
his  wonted  gentleness — but  not  so  gratefully,  thought  Constance, 
as  he  ought.  In  truth,  he  had  been  too  much  accustomed  to  the 
eager  love  of  Lucilla,  to  feel  greatly  surprised  at  any  proof  of  ten- 
derness from  Constance.  Thus,  too  proud  to  speak,  to  hint  a 
complaint,  Constance  was  nevertheless  perpetually  wounded,  and 
by  degrees  (although  not  loving  her  husband  less)  she  taught  that 
love  to  be  more  concealed.  Oh,  that  accursed  secretiveness  in 
women,  which  makes  them  always  belie  themselves  ! 

Godolphin,  too,  was  not  without  his  disappointments.  There 
was  something  so  bright,  so  purely  intellectual  about  Constance's 
character,  that  at  times,  when  brought  into  constant  intercourse 
vith  her,  you  longed  for  some  human  weakness — some  wild  warm 
error  on  which  to  repose.  Dazzling  and  fair  as  snow,  like  snow, 
your  eye  ached  to  gaze  upon  her.  She  had,  during  the  years  of 
ungenial  marriage,  cultivated  her  mind  to  the  utmost ;  few  women 
were  so  accomplished — it  might  be  learned ;  her  conversation 
flowed  forever  in  the  same  bright,  flowery,  adorned  stream. 
There  were  times  when  Godolphin  recollected  how  hard  it  is  to 
read  a  volume  of  that  Gibbon  who  in  a  page  is  so  delightful.  Her 
affection  for  him  was  intense,  high,  devoted ;  but  it  was  wholly 
of  the  same  intellectual,  spiritualized  order  ;  it  seemed  to  Godol- 
phin to  want  human  warmth  and  fondness.  In  fact,  there  never 
was  a  woman  who.  both  by  original  nature  and  after  habits,  was 
so  purely  and  abstractedly  ' '  mind  ' '  as  was  Constance ;  there  was 
not  a  single  trait  or  taste  in  her  character,  that  a  sensualist  could 
have  sneered  at.  Her  heart  was  wholly  Godolphin's  ;  her  mind 
was  generous,  sympathizing,  lofty  ;  her  person  unrivalled  in  the 
majesty  of  its  loveliness ;  all  these,  too,  were  Godolphin's,  and  yet 
the  eternal  something  was  wanting  still. 

"  I  have  brought  you  your  hat,  Percy,"  said  Constance;  "  you 
forget  the  dews  are  falling  fast,  and  your  head  is  uncovered." 

"  Thank  you,"  said  Percy,  gently  ;  yet  Constance  thought 'the 
tone  might  have  been  warmer.  ' '  How  beautiful  is  this  hour  ! 
Look  yonder,  the  sun's  ray  still  upon  those  immortal  hills ;  that 
lone  gray  tower  amongst  the  far  plains;  the  pines  around — 
hearken  to  their  sighing !  These  are  indeed  the  scenes  of  the 
Dryad  and  the  Faun.  These  are  scenes  where  we  could  melt  ouv 
whole  nature  down  to  love :  Nature  never  meant  us  for  the  stern 
and  arid  destinies  we  fulfil.  Look  round,  Constance,  in  every 
leaf  of  her  gorgeous  book,  how  glowingly  is  written  the  one  sen- 


206  GODOLPHFN. 

tence,  '  LOVE,  AND  BE  HAPPY  ! '  You  answer  not ;  to  these  thoughts 
you  are  cold." 

"  They  breathe  too  much  of  the  Epicurean  and  his  rose-leaves 
for  me,"  answered  Constance,  smilingly.  " I  love  better  that 
stern  old  tower,  telling  of  glorious  strife  and  great  deeds,  than  all 
the  softer  landscape,  on  which  the  present  debasement  of  the 
south  seems  written." 

"You  and  your  English,"  said  Godolphin,  somewhat  bitterly, 
"  prate  of  the  debasement  of  my  poor  Italians  in  a  jargon  that  I 
confess  almost  enrages  me.  (Constance  colored  and  bit  her  lip.) 
Debasement !  Why  debasement  ?  They  enjoy  themselves ;  they 
take  from  life  its  just  moral ;  they  do  not  affect  the  more  violent 
crimes ;  they  feel  their  mortality,  follow  its  common  ends,  are 
frivolous,  contented,  and  die !  Well ;  this  is  debasement.  Be 
it  so.  But  for  what  would  you  exchange  it?  The  hard,  cold, 
ferocious  guilt  of  ancient  Rome ;  the  detestable  hypocrisy,  the 
secret  villany,  fraud,  murder,  that  stamped  republican  Venice  ? 
The  days  of  glory  that  you  lament  are  the  days  of  the  darkest 
guilt;  and  man  shudders  when  he  reads  what  the  fair  moralizers 
over  the  soft  and  idle  Italy  sigh  to  recall !  " 

"You  are  severe,"  said  Constance,  with  a  pained  voice. 

"  Forgive  me,  dearest,  but  you  are  often  severe  on  my 
feelings. ' ' 

Constance  was  silent ;  the  magic  of  the  sunset  was  gone;  they 
walked  back  to  the  house,  thoughtful,  and  somewhat  cooled 
towards  each  other. 

Another  day,  on  which  the  rain  forbade  them  to  stir  from 
home,  Godolphin,  after  he  had  remained  long  silent  and  medi- 
tating, said  to  Constance,  who  was  busy  writing  letters  to  her 
political  friends,  in  which,  avoiding  Italy  and  love,  the  scheming 
Countess  dwelt  only  on  busy  England  and  its  eternal  politics. 

"Will  you  read  to  me,  dear  Constance ?  My  spirits  are  sad  to- 
day !  The  weather  affects  them  ! ' ' 

Constance  laid  aside  her  letters,  and  took  up  one  of  the  many 
books  that  strewed  the  table  :  it  was  a  volume  of  one  of  our  most 
popular  poets. 

"  I  hate  poetry,"  said  Godolphin,  languidly. 

"Here  is  Machiavel's  history  of  the  Prince  of  Lucca,"  said 
Constance,  quickly. 

"Ah,  read  that,  and  see  how  odious  is  ambition,"  returned 
Godolphin. 

And  Constance  read,  but  she  warmed  at  what  Godolphin's  lip 
curled  with  disdain.  The  sentiments,  however,  drew  him  from 
his  apathy  ;  and  presently,  with  the  eloquence  he  could  command 


GODOLPHIN.  207 

when  once  excited,  he  poured  forth  the  doctrines  of  his  peculiar 
philosophy.  Constance  listened,  delighted  and  absorbed  ;  she 
did  not  sympathize  with  the  thought,  but  she  was  struck  with  the 
genius  which  clothed  it. 

"Ah  !  "  said  she,  with  enthusiasm,  "why  should  those  brilli- 
ant words  be  thus  spoken  and  lost  forever  ?  Why  not  stamp  them 
on  the  living  page,  or  why  not  invest  them  in  the  oratory  that 
would  render  j>w/  illustrous  and  them  immortal." 

"Excellent!"  said  Godolphin,  laughing:  "the  House  of 
Commons  would  sympathize  with  philosophy  warmly  !  " 

Yet  Constance  was  right  on  the  whole.  But  the  curse  of  a  life 
of  pleasure  is  its  aversion  to  useful  activity.  Talk  of  the  genius 
that  lies  crushed  and  obscure  in  poverty !  Wealth  and  station 
have  also  their  mute  Miltons  and  inglorious  Hampdens.  Alas  ! 
how  much  of  deep  and  true  wisdom  do  we  meet  among  the 
triflers  of  the  world  !  How  much  that  in  the  stern  middle  walks 
of  life  would  have  obtained  renown,  in  the  withering  and  relaxed 
air  of  loftier  rank  dies  away  unheeded  !  The  two  extremes  meet 
in  this, — the  destruction  of  mental  gifts. 

CHAPTER  XLIX. 

THE  RETURN   TO  LONDON. THE  ETERNAL  NATURE  OF  DISAPPOINT- 
MENT.  FANNY  M1LLINGER. — HER  HOUSE  AND  SUPPER. 

IT  was  in  the  midst  of  spring,  and  at  the  approach  of  night, 
that  our  travellers  entered  London.  After  an  absence  of  some 
duration,  there  is  a  singular  emotion  on  returning  to  the  roar  and 
tumult  of  that  vast  city.  Its  bustle,  its  life,  its  wealth — the  tokens 
of  the  ambition  and  commerce  of  the  Great  Island  Race — have 
something  of  inconceivable  excitement  and  power,  after  the  com- 
parative desertion  and  majestic  stillness  of  Continental  cities. 
Constance  leaned  restlessly  forth  from  the  window  of  the  carriage 
as  it  whirled  on. 

"  Oh,  that  I  were  a  man  !  "  said  she,  fervently. 

"And  why?"  asked  Godolphin,  smilingly. 

"Why !  Look  out  on  this  broad  theatre  of  universal  ambition, 
and  read  the  why.  What  a  proud  and  various  career  lies  open  in 
this  free  city  to  every  citizen  !  Look,  look  yonder — the  old 
hereditary  senate,  still  eloquent  with  high  memories." 

"And  close  by  it,"  said  Godolphin,  sneering,  "behold  the 
tomb ! " 

"Yes,  but  the  tomb  of  great  men  !  "  said  Constance,  eagerly. 

"  The  victims  of  their  greatness." 


2o8  GODOLPHIN. 

There  was  a  pause ;  Constance  would  not  reply ;  she  would 
scarcely  listen. 

' '  And  do  you  feel  no  excitement,  Percy,  in  the  hum  and  bustle, 
the  lights,  the  pomp  of  your  native  city?  " 

' '  Yes ;  I  am  in  the  mart  where  all  enjoyment  may  be  pur- 
chased." 

"Ah,  fie!" 

Godolphin  drew  his  cloak  round  him,  and  put  up  the  window. 
"These  cursed  east  winds !  " 

Very  true — they  are  the  curse  of  the  country  ! 

The  carriage  stopped  at  the  stately  portico  of  the  Erpingham 
House.  Godolphin  felt  a  little,  humiliated  at  being  indebted  to 
another — to  a  woman — for  so  splendid  a  tenement ;  but  Constance, 
not  penetrating  into  this  sentiment,  hastened  up  the  broad  stairs, 
and  said,  pointing  to  a  door  that  led  to  her  boudoir : 

"In  that  room  cabinets  have  been  formed  and  shaken." 

Godolphin  laughed ;  he  was  alive  only  to  the  vanity  of  the  boast, 
because  he  shared  not  the  enthusiasm;  this  was  Constance's  weak 
point:  her  dark  eye  flashed  fire. 

There's  nothing  bores  a  man  more  than  the  sort  of  uneasy  quiet 
that  follows  a  day's  journey.  Godolphin  took  his  hat,  and  yawn- 
ingly  stretching  himself,  nodded  to  Constance,  and  moved  to  the 
door ;  they  were  in  her  dressing-room  at  the  time. 

"Why,  what,  Percy,  you  cannot  be  going  out  now  !  " 

"  Indeed  I  am,  my  love." 

"Where,  in  Heaven's  name?" 

"  To  White's,  to  learn  the  news  of  the  Opera,  and  the  strength 
of  the  Ballet." 

"I  had  just  rung  for  lights,  to  show  you  the  house  !"  said 
Constance,  disappointed  and  half-reproachfully. 

"  Mercy,  Constance  !  damp  rooms  and  east  winds  together  are 
too  much.  House,  indeed  !  What  can  there  be  worth  seeing  in 
your  English  drawing  rooms  after  the  marble  palaces  of  Italy  ? 
Any  commands?  " 

"  None  !  "  said  Constance  sinking  back  into  her  chair,  with  the 
tears  in  her  eyes.  Godolphin  did  not  perceive  them ;  he  was 
only  displeased  by  the  cold  tone  of  her  answer,  and  he  shut  the 
door,  muttering  to  himself:  "Was  there  ever  such  indelicate 
ostentation !  " 

"And  thus,"  said  Constance,  bitterly,  "I  return  to  England  ; 
friendless,  unloved,  solitary  in  my  schemes  and  my  heart  as  I  was 
before.  Awake,  my  soul !  thou  art  my  sole  strength,  my  sole  sup- 
port. Weak,  weak  that  I  was,  to  love  this  man  in  spite  of — Well, 
well,  I  am  not  sunk  so  low  as  to  regret." 


GODOLPHIN.  209 

So  saying,  she  wiped  away  a  few  tears,  and  turning  with  a  strong 
effort  from  softer  thoughts,  leaned  her  cheek  on  her  hand,  and 
gazing  on  the  fire,  surrendered  herself  to  the  sterner  and  more 
plotting  meditations  which  her  return  to  the  circle  of  her  old 
ambition  had  at  first  called  forth. 

Meanwhile  Godolphin  sauntered  into  the  then  arch-club  of  St. 
James's,  that  reservoir  of  idle  exquisites  and  kid-gloved  politicians. 
There  are  two  classes  of  popular  men  in  London  ;  the  sprightly, 
joyous,  good-humored  set :  the  quiet,  gentle,  sarcastic  herd.  The 
one  are  fellows  called  devilish  good — the  other,  fellows  called 
devilish  gentleman-like.  To  the  latter  class  belonged  Godolphin. 
As  he  had  never  written  a  book,  nor  set  up  for  a  genius,  his  clev- 
erness was  tacitly  allowed  to  be  no  impediment  to  his  good  quali- 
ties. Nothing  atones  for  the  sin,  in  the  eyes  of  those  young  gen- 
tlemen who  create  for  their  contemporaries  reputation,  of  having 
in  any  way  distinguished  oneself.  "  He's  such  a  d — d  bore,  that 
man  with  his  books  and  poetry,"  said  an  arch-dandy  of  Byron, 
just  after  "  Childe  Harold  "  had  turned  the  heads  of  the  women. 
There  happened  to  be  a  knot  assembled  at  White's  when  Godol- 
phin entered  ;  they  welcomed  him  affectionately. 

"  Wish  you  joy,  old  fellow,"  said  one.  "Bless  me,  Godolphin ! 
well,  I  am  delighted  to  see  you,"  cried  another.  "  So,  you  have 
monopolized  Lady  Erpingham  ! — lucky  dog  !  "  whispered  a  third. 

Godolphin,  his  vanity  soothed  by  the  reception  he  met  with, 
spent  his  evening  at  the  Club.  The  habit  begun,  became  easy — 
Godolphin  spent  many  evenings  at  his  club.  Constance,  running 
the  round  of  her  acquaintance,  was  too  proud  to  complain.  Per- 
haps complaint  would  not  have  mended  the  matter :  but  one  word 
of  delicate  tenderness,  or  one  look  that  asked  for  his  society,  and 
White's  would  have  been  forsaken  !  Godolphin  secretly  resented 
the  very  evenness  of  temper  he  had  once  almost  overprized. 

"Oh,  Godolphin,"  one  evening  whispered  a  young  lord,  "  we 
sup  at  the  little  actress's, — the  Millinger ;  you  remember  the 
Millinger  ?  You  must  come ;  you  are  an  old  favorite,  you  know  : 
she'll  be  so  glad  to  see  you, — all  innocent,  by  the  way :  Lady 
Erpingham  need  not  be  jealous  (jealous  !  Constance  jealous  of 
Fanny  Millinger  !  )  all  innocent.  Come,  I'll  drive  you  there;  my 
cab  is  at  the  door." 

"  Anything  better  than  a  lecture  on  ambition,"  thought  Godol- 
phin; and  he  consented.  Godolphin's  friend  was  a  lively  young 
nobleman,  of  that  good-natured,  easy,  uncaptious  temper,  which 
a  clever,  susceptible,  indolent  man  often  likes  better  than  com- 
rades more  intellectual,  because  he  has  not  to  put  himself  out  of 
his  v/ay  in  the  comradeship.  Lord  Falconer  rattled  on  as  they 
14 


2IO  GO  DOLPHIN. 

drove  along  the  brilliant  streets,  through  a  thousand  topics,  of 
which  Godolphin  heard  as  much  as  he  pleased ;  and  Falconer 
was  of  that  age  and  those  spirits  when  a  listener  may  be  easily 
dispensed  with. 

They  arrived  at  a  little  villa  at  Brompton  :  there  was  a  little 
garden  round  it,  and  a  little  bower  in  one  corner,  all  kept  exces- 
sively neat ;  and  the  outside  of  the  house  had  just  been  painted 
white  from  top  to  bottom;  and  there  was  a  verandah  to  the 
house ;  and  the  windows  were  plate-glass,  with  mahogany  sashes 
— only,  here  and  there,  a  Gothic  casement  was  stuck  in  by  way 
of  looking  "tasty"  ;  and  through  one  window  on  the  ground- 
floor,  the  lights,  shining  within,  showed  crimson  silk  and  gilded 
chairs,  and  all  sorts  of  finery — Louis  Quatorze  in  a  nutshell  ! 
The  reader  knows  the  sort  of  house  as  well  as  if  he  had  lived  in 
it.  Ladies  of  Fanny  Millinger's  turn  of  mind  always  choose  the 
same  kind  of  habitation.  It  is  astonishing  what  an  unanimity  of 
tas*e  they  have  ;  and  young  men  about  town  call  it  "  taste  "  too, 
and  imitate  the  fashion  in  their  own  little  tusculums  in  Chapel 
Street. 

After  having  threaded  a  Gothic  hall  four  feet  by  eight,  and  an 
oval  conservatory  with  a  river-god  in  the  middle,  the  two  visitors 
found  themselves  in  the  presence  of  Fanny  Millinger. 

Godolphin  had  certainly  felt  no  small  curiosity  to  see  again  the 
frank,  fair,  laughing  face  which  had  shone  on  his  boyhood,  and 
his  mind  ran  busily  back  to  that  summer  evening  when,  with  a 
pulse  how  different  from  its  present  languid  tenor,  and  a  heart 
burning  with  ardor  and  the  pride  of  novel  independence,  the 
young  adventurer  first  sallied  on  the  world.  He  drew  back 
involuntarily  as  he  now  gazed  on  the  actress  :  she  had  kept  the 
promise  of  her  youth,  and  grown  round  and  full  in  her  propor- 
tions. She  was  extravagantly  dressed,  but  not  with  an  ungrace- 
ful, although  a  theatrical  choice :  her  fair  hands  and  arms  were 
covered  with  jewels,  and  that  indescribable  air  which  betrays  the 
stage  was  far  more  visibly  marked  in  her  deportment  than  when 
Godolphin  first  knew  her ;  yet  still  there  was  the  same  freedom 
as  of  old,  the  same  joyousness,  and  good-humored  carelessness  in 
her  manner,  and  in  the  silver  ring  of  her  voice,  as  she  greeted 
Falconer,  and  turned  to  question  him  as  to  his  friend.  Godolphin 
dropped  his  cloak,  and  the  next  moment,  with  a  pretty  scream, 
quite  stage-effect,  and  yet  quite  natural,  the  actress  had  thrown 
herself  into  his  arms. 

"Oh  !  but  I  forgot,"  said  she  presently,  with  a  mock  saluta- 
tion of  respect,  "you  are  married  now;  there  will  be  no  more 
cakes  and  ale.  Ah  !  what  long  years  since  we  met ;  yet  I  have 


GODOLPHIN.  211 

never  quite  forgotten  you,  although  the  stage  requires  all  one's 
memory  for  one's  new  parts.  Alas  !  your  hair — it  was  so  beauti- 
ful— it  has  lost  half  its  curl,  and  grown  thin.  Very  rude  in  me 
to  say  so,  but  I  always  speak  the  truth,  and  my  heart  warms  to 
see  you,  so  all  its  thoughts  thaw  out." 

"Well,"  said  Lord  Falconer,  who  had  been  playing  with  a 
little  muffy  sort  of  dog,  -'<  you'll  recollect  me  presently  " 

"  You  !  Oh  !  one  never  thinks  of  you,  except  when  you  speak, 
and  then  one  recollects  you — to  look  at  the  clock." 

"  Very  good,  Fanny — very  good,  Fan  :  and  when  do  you 
expect  Windsor  !  He  ought  to  be  here  soon.  Tell  me,  do  you 
like  him  really?" 

"Like  him?  Yes,  excessively;  just  the  word  for  him — for 
you  all.  If  love  were  thrown  into  the  stream  of  life,  my  little 
sail  would  be  upset  in  an  instant.  But  in  truth,  what  with  dress- 
ing, and  playing,  and  all  the  grave  business  of  life,  I  am  not  idle 
enough  to  love.  And  oh,  Godolphin,  I'm  so  improved  !  Ask 
Lord  Falconer,  if  I  don't  sing  like  an  angel  although  my  voice  is 
hardly  strong  enough  to  go  round  a  loo-table  ;  but  on  the  stage. 
one  learns  to  dispense  with  all  qualities.  It  is  a  curious  thing, 
that  fictitious  existence,  side  by  side  with  the  real  one  !  We  live 
in  enchantment,  Percy,  and  enjoy  what  the  poets  pretend  to." 

The  dreaming  Godolphin  was  struck  by  the  remark.  He  was 
surprised,  also,  to  see  how  much  Fanny  remained  the  same.  A 
life  of  gaiety  had  not  debased  her. 

Tom  Windsor  came  next,  an  Irishman  of  five-and-forty,  not 
like  his  countrymen  in  aught  save  wit.  Thin,  small,  shrivelled, 
but  up  to  his  ears  in  knowledge  of  the  world,  and  with  a  jest  for- 
ever on  his  tongue ;  rich  and  gay,  he  was  always  popular,  and  he 
made  the  most  of  this  little  life  without  being  an  absolute  rascal. 
Next  dropped  in  the  handsome  Frenchman,  De  Damville ;  next, 
the  young  gambler,  St.  John ;  next,  two  ladies,  both  actresses ; 
and  the  party  was  complete. 

The  supper  was  in  keeping  with  the  house ;  the  best  wines, 
excellent  viands — the  actress  had  grown  rich.  Wit,  noise,  good- 
humor,  anecdote  flashed  round  with  the  champagne,  and  Godol- 
phin, exhilarated  into  a  second  youth,  fancied  himself  once  more 
the  votary  of  pleasure. 


212  GODOLPHIN. 

CHAPTER  L. 

GODOLPHIN'S  SOLILOQUY. — HE  BECOMES  A  MAN  OF  PLEASURE  AND  A 
PATRON  OF  THE  ARTS. — A  NEW  CHARACTER  SHADOWED  FORTH  ; 
FOR  AS  WE  ADVANCE,  WHETHER  IN  LIFE  OR  ITS  REPRESENTATION, 
CHARACTERS  ARE  MORE  FAINT  AND  DIMLY  DRAWN  THAN  IN  THE 
EARLIER  PART  OF  OUR  CAREER. 

"YES,"  said  Godolphin,  the  next  morning,  as  he  soliloquized 
over  his  lonely  breakfast-table — lonely,  for  the  hours  of  the  rest- 
less Constance  were  not  those  of  the  luxurious  and  indolent  Go- 
dolphin,  and  she  was  already  in  her  carriage — nay,  already  closet- 
ed with  an  intriguing  ambassadress:  "Yes;  I  have  passed  two 
eras  of  life — the  first  of  romance,  the  second  of  contemplation  ; 
once  my  favorite  study  was  poetry — next,  philosophy.  Now,  re- 
turned to  my  native  country,  rich,  settled,  yet  young,  new  objects 
arise  to  me ;  not  that  vulgar  and  troublous  ambition  (which  is  to 
make  a  toil  of  life)  that  Constance  suggests,  but  a  more  warm  and 
vivid  existence  than  that  I  have  lately  dreamed  away.  Let  lux- 
ury and  pleasure  now  be  to  me  what  solitude  and  thought  were. 
I  have  been  too  long  the  solitary,  I  will  learn  to  be  social." 

Agreeably  to  this  resolution,  Godolphin  returned  with  avidity 
to  the  enjoyment  of  the  world ;  he  found  himself  courted,  he 
courted  society  in  return.  Erpingham  House  had  been  for  years 
the  scene  of  fascination  :  who  does  not  recollect  the  yet  greater 
refinement  which  its  new  lord  threw  over  its  circles  ?  A  delicate 
and  just  conception  of  the  fine  arts  had  always  characterized  Go- 
dolphin.  He  now  formed  that  ardor  for  collecting  common  to 
the  more  elegant  order  of  minds.  From  his  beloved  Italy  he  im- 
ported the  most  beautiful  statues;  his  cabinets  were  filled  with 
gems ;  his  walls  glowed  with  the  triumphs  of  the  canvas  ;  the  showy 
but  heterogeneous  furniture  of  Erpingham  House  gave  way  to  a 
more  classic  and  perfect  taste.  The  same  fastidiousness  which, 
in  the  affairs  of  the  heart,  had  characterized  Godolphin's  habits 
and  sentiments,  characterized  his  new  pursuits ;  the  same  thirst 
for  the  Ideal,  the  same  worship  of  the  Beautiful,  and  aspirations 
after  the  Perfect. 

It  was  not  in  Constance's  nature  to  admit  this  smaller  ambi- 
tion ;  her  taste  was  pure,  but  not  minute,  she  did  not  descend  to 
the  philosophy  of  detail.  But  she  was  glad  still  to  see  that  Godol- 
phin could  be  aroused  to  the  discovery  of  an  active  object ;  and, 
although  she  sighed  to  perceive  his  fine  genius  frittered  away  on 
the  trifles  of  the  virtuoso ;  although  she  secretly  regretted  the 
waste  of  her  great  wealth  (which  afforded  to  political  ambition  so 


GODOLPHIN.  213 

high  an  advantage)  on  the  mute  marble,  and  what  she  deemed, 
nor  unjustly,  frivolous  curiosities,  she  still  never  interfered  with 
Godolphm's  caprices,  conscious  that,  to  his  delicacy,  a  single 
objection  to  his  wishes  on  the  score  c-f  expense  would  have  re- 
minded him  of  what  she  wished  him  most  to  forget,  viz.,  that  the 
means  of  this  lavish  expenditure  were  derived  from  her.  She 
hoped  that  his  mind,  once  fairly  awakened,  would  soon  grow 
sated  with  the  acquisition  of  baubles,  and  at  length  sigh  for  loftier 
objects ;  and,  in  the  meanwhile,  she  plunged  into  her  old  party 
plots  and  ambitious  intrigues. 

Erpingham  House,  celebrated  as  ever  for  the  beauty  of  its  queen 
and  for  the  political  nature  of  its  entertainments,  received  a  new 
celebrity  from  its  treasures  of  art  and  the  spiritual  wit  and  grace 
with  which  Godolphin  invested  its  attractions.  Among  the  crowd 
of  its  guests  there  was  one  whom  its  owners  more  particularly  es- 
teemed. Stainforth  Radclyffe  was  still  considerably  under  thirty, 
but  already  a  distinguished  man.  At  school  he  had  been  distin- 
guished; at  college  distinguished,  and  now  in  the  world  of  science 
distinguished  also.  Beneath  a  quiet,  soft,  and  cold  exterior,  he 
concealed  the  most  resolute  and  persevering  ambition ;  and  this 
ambition  was  the  governing  faculty  of  his  soul.  His  energies 
were  undistracted  by  small  objects ;  for  he  went  little  into  gener- 
al society,  and  he  especially  sought  in  his  studies  those  pursuits 
which  nerve  and  brace  the  mind.  He  was  a  profound  thinker,  a 
deep  political  economist,  an  accurate  financier,  a  judge  of  the 
intricacies  of  morals  and  legislation — for  to  his  mere  book-studies 
he  added  an  instinctive  penetration  into  men ;  and  when  from 
time  to  time  he  rejoined  the  world,  he  sought  out  those  most  dis- 
tinguished in  the  sciences  he  had  cultivated,  and  by  their  lights 
corrected  his  own.  In  him  there  was  nothing  desultory  or  unde- 
termined ;  his  conduct  was  perpetual  calculation.  He  did  noth- 
ing but  with  an  eye  to  a  final  object ;  and  when,  to  the  superfi- 
cial, he  seemed  most  to  wander  from  the  road  their  prudence 
would  have  suggested,  he  was  only  seeking  the  surest  and  shortest 
paths.  Yet  his  ambition  was  not  the  mere  vulgar  thirst  for  get- 
ting on  in  the  world ;  he  cared  little  for  the  paltry  place,  the  petty 
power  which  may  reward  what  are  called  aspiring  young  men. 
His  clear  sight  penetrated  to  objects  that  seemed  wrapped  in  shade 
to  all  others ;  and  to  those  only — distant,  but  vast  and  towering 
— he  deigned  to  attach  his  desires.  He  cared  not  for  small  and 
momentary  rewards ;  and  while  always  (for  he  knew  its  necessity) 
uppermost  on  the  tide  of  the  hour,  he  had  neither  joy  nor  thought 
for  the  petty  honors  for  which  he  was  envied,  and  by  which  he 
was  supposed  to  be  elated.  Always  occupied  and  always  thought- 


214  GODOLPH1N 

ful,  he  went,  as  I  have  just  said,  very  little  into  the  gay  world, 
and  was  not  very  well  formed  to  shine  it  in  when  there;  for  trifles 
require  the  whole  man  as  much  as  matters  of  importance.  He 
did  not  want  either  wit  or  polish,  but  he  tasked  his  powers  too 
severely  on  great  subjects  not  to  be  sometimes  dull  upon  small 
ones ;  yet,  when  he  was  either  excited  or  at  home,  he  was  not 
without — what  man  of  genius  is  ? — his  peculiar  powers  of  con- 
versation.  There  was  in  this  young,  dark,  brooding,  stern  man, 
that  which  had  charmed  Constance  at  first  sight ;  she  thought  to 
recognize  a  nature  like  her  own,  and  Radclyffe's  venturous  spirit 
exulted  in  a  commune  with  hers.  Their  politics  were  the  same  ; 
their  ultimate  ends  not  very  unlike  ;  and  their  common  ambition 
furnished  them  with  an  eternity  of  topics  and  schemes.  Rad- 
clyffe  was  Constance's  guest;  but  Godolphin  soon  grew  attached 
to  the  young  politician,  though  he  shrugged  his  shoulders  at  his 
opinions.  In  youth,  Godolphin  had  been  a  Tory  ;  now,  if  any- 
thing,  he  was  a  Tory  still.  Such  a  political  creed  was  perhaps 
the  natural  result  of  his  philosophical  belief.  Constance,  Whig 
by  profession,  ulta-Liberal  in  reality,  still  however  gave  the  char- 
acter to  the  politics  of  the  House  ;  and  the  easy  Godolphin 
thought  politics  the  veriest  of  all  the  trifles  which  a  man  could 
leave  to  the  discretion  of  the  lady  of  his  household.  We  may 
judge,  therefore,  of  the  quiet,  complacent  amusement  he  felt  in 
the  didactics  of  Radclyffe  or  the  declamations  of  Constance. 

"That  is  a  dangerous,  scheming  woman,  believe  me,"  said 

the  Duchess  of to  her  great  husband,  one  morning,  when 

Constance  left  her  Grace. 

44  Nonsense  !  women  are  never  dangerous  " 

CHAPTER  LI. 

GODOLPHIN'S  COURSE  OF  LIFE. — INFLUENCE  OF  OPINION  AND 
OF  RIDICULE  ON  THE  MINDS  OF  PRIVILEGED  ORDERS. — 
LADY  ERPINGHAM'S  FRIENDSHIP  WITH  GEORGE  THE  FOURTH. 
—HIS  MANNER  OF  LIVING. 

THE  course  of  life  which  Godolphin  now  led  was  exactly  that 
which  it  is  natural  for  a  very  rich  intellectual  man  to  indulge — 
voluptuous,  but  refined.  He  was  arriving  at  that  age  when  the 
poetry  of  the  heart  necessarily  decays.  Wealth  almost  unlimited 
was  at  his  command;  he  had  no  motive  for  exertion,  and  he  now 
sought  in  pleasure  that  which  he  had  formerly  asked  from  ro- 
mance. As  his  faculties  and  talents  had  no  other  circle  for  dis- 
play than  that  which  "  society  '"  affords  ;  so  by  slow  degrees, 


GODOLPHIN.  2  i  5 

society — its  applause  and  its  regard — became  to  him  of  greater 
importance  than  his  "philosophy  dreamt  of."  Whatever  the 
circle  we  live  amongst,  the  public  opinion  of  that  circle  will, 
sooner  or  later,  obtain  a  control  over  us.  This  is  the  rea- 
son why  a  life  of  pleasure  makes  even  the  strongest  mind  friv- 
olous at  last.  The  lawyer,  the  senator,  the  man  of  letters,  all  are 
insensibly  guided — moulded — formed — by  the  judgment  of  the 
tribe  they  belong  to,  and  the  circle  in  which  they  move.  Stii! 
more  is  it  the  case  with  the  idlers  of  the  great  world,  amongst 
whom  the  only  main  staple  of  talk  is  "themselves." 

And  in  the  last-named  set,  Ridicule  being  more  strong  ano; 
fearful  a  deity  than  she  is  amongst  the  cultivators  of  the  graver 
occupations  of  life,  reduces  the  inmates,  by  a  constant  dread  oi 
incurring  her  displeasure,  to  a  more  monotonous  and  regular  sub- 
jection to  the  judgment  of  others.  Ridicule  is  the  stifler  of  all 
energy  amongst  those  she  controls.  After  a  man's  position  in 
society  is  once  established ;  after  he  has  arrived  at  a  certain  age; 
he  does  not  like  to  hazard  any  intellectual  enterprise  which  may 
endanger  the  quantum  of  respect  or  popularity  at  present  allotted 
to  him.  He  does  not  like  to  risk  a  failure  in  Parliament,  a  caus- 
tic criticism  in  literature;  he  does  not  like  to  excite  new  jeal- 
ousies, and  provoke  angry  rivals  where  he  now  finds  complaisant 
inferiors.  The  most  admired  authors,  the  most  respected  mem- 
bers of  either  House,  now  looked  up  to  Godolphin  as  a  man  of 
wit  and  genius;  a  man  whose  house,  whose  wealth,  who^e  wife, 
gave  him  an  influence  few  individuals  enjoy.  Why  risk  all  this 
respect  by  provoking  comparison?  Among  the  first  in  one  line, 
why  sink  into  the  probability  of  being  second-rate  in  another? 

This  motive,  which  secretly  governs  half  the  aristocracy — the 
cleverer  half,  viz.,  the  more  diffident  and  the  more  esteemed ; 
which  leaves  to  the  obtuse  and  the  vain,  a  despised  and  unenvi- 
able notoriety;  added  new  force  to  Godolphin's  philosophical 
indifference  to  ambition.  Perhaps,  had  his  situation  been  less 
brilliant,  or  had  he  persevered  in  that  early  affection  for  solitude 
which  youth  loves  as  the  best  nurse  to  its  dreams,  he  might  now, 
in  attaining  an  age  when  ambition,  often  dumb  before,  usually 
begins  to  make  itself  heard,  have  awakened  to  a  more  resolute 
and  aspiring  temperament  of  mind.  But,  as  it  was,  courted  and 
surrounded  by  all  the  enjoyments  which  are  generally  the  reward 
to  which  exertion  looks,  even  an  ambitious  man  might  have  for- 
gotten his  nature.  No  wound  to  his  vanity,  no  feeling  that  he 
was  underrated  (that  great  spur  to  proud  minds),  excited  him 
to  those  exertions  we  undertake  in  order  to  btlie  calumny.  He 
Was  "  the  glass  of  fashion,"  at  once  popular  and  admired  :  and 


210  GODOLPHIN. 

his  good  fortune  in  marrying  the  celebrated,  the  wealthy,  the 
beautiful  Countess  of  Erpingham  was,  as  success  always  is,  con- 
sidered the  proof  of  his  genius,  and  the  token  of  his  merits. 

It  was  certainly  true,  that  a  secret  and  mutual  disappointment 
rankled  beneath  the  brilliant  lot  of  the  husband  and  wife.  Godol- 
phin  exacted  from  Constance  more  softness,  more  devotion,  more 
compliance  than  belonged  to  her  nature  ;  and  Constance,  on  the 
other  hand,  ceased  not  to  repine  that  she  found  in  Godolphin  no 
sympathy  with  her  objects,  and  no  feeling  for  her  enthusiasm. 
As  there  was  little  congenial  in  their  pursuits,  the  one  living  for 
pleasure,  the  other  for  ambition,  so  there  could  be  no  congenial- 
ity in  their  intercourse.  They  loved  each  other  still ;  they  loved 
each  othei  warmly ;  they  never  quarrelled  ;  for  the  temper  of 
Constance  was  mild,  and  that  of  Godolphin  generous  :  but  neither 
believed  there  was  much  love  on  the  other  side;  and  both  sought 
abroad  that  fellowship  and  those  objects  they  had  not  in  common 
at  home. 

Constance  was  a  great  favorite  with  the  reigning  King  ;  she  was 
constantly  invited  to  the  narrow  circle  of  festivities  at  Windsor. 
Godolphin,  who  avoided  the  being  bored  as  the  greatest  of  earthly 
evils,  could  not  bow  down  his  tastes  and  habits  to  any  exact  and 
precise  order  of  life,  however  distinguished  the  circle  in  which  it 
became  the  rule.  Thirsting  to  be  amused,  he  could  not  conju- 
gate the  active  verb  ' '  to  amuse. ' '  No  man  was  more  fitted  to 
adorn  a  court,  yet  no  man  could  less  play  the  courtier.  He  ad- 
mired the  manner  of  the  sovereign,  he  did  homage  to  the  natural 
acuteness  of  his  understanding ;  but,  accustomed  as  he  was  to  lay 
down  the  law  in  society,  he  was  too  proud  to  receive  it  from  an- 
other— a  common  case  among  those  who  live  with  the  great  by 
right,  and  not  through  sufferance.  His  pride  made  him  fear  to 
seem  a  parasite;  and,  too  chivalrous  to  be  disloyal,  he  was  too 
haughty  to  be  subservient.  In  fact,  he  was  thoroughly  formed  to 
be  the  Great  Aristocrat, — a  career  utterly  distinct  from  that  of 
the  Hanger-on  upon  a  still  greater  man  ;  and  against  his  success 
at  court,  he  had  an  obstacle  no  less  in  the  inherent  fierte  of  his 
nature,  than  in  the  acquired  philosophy  of  his  cynicism. 

The  King,  at  first,  was  civil  enough  to  Lady  Erpingham's  hus- 
band ;  but  he  had  penetration  enough  to  see  that  he  was  not  ade- 
quately admired :  and  on  the  first  demonstration  of  royal  cool- 
ness, Godolphin,  glad  of  an  excuse,  foreswore  Castle  and  Pavilion 
forever,  and  left  Constance  to  enjoy  alone  the  honors  of  the  regal 
hospitality.  The  world  would  have  insinuated  scandal ;  but 
there  was  that  about  Constance's  beauty  which  there  is  said  by 


GODOLPHIN.  217 

one  of  the  poets  to  belong  to  an  Angel's — it  struck  the  heart, 
but  awed  the  senses. 

CHAPTER  LII. 

RADCLYFFE    AND   GODOLPHIN    CONVERSE. — THE   VARIETIES   OF 

AMBITION. 

"  I  DON'T  know,"  said  Godolphin  to  Radclyffe,  as  they  were 
one  day  riding  together  among  the  green  lanes  that  border  the 
metropolis  ;  "  I  don't  know  what  to  do  with  myself  this  evening. 
Lady  Erpingham  is  gone  to  Windsor  ;  I  have  no  dinner  engage- 
ment, and  I  am  wearied  of  balls.  Shall  we  dine  together,  and 
go  to  the  play  quietly,  as  we  might  have  done  some  ten  years 
ago  ?" 

"  Nothing  I  should  like  better  ;  and  the  theatre — are  you  fond 
of  it  now  ?  I  think  I  have  heard  you  say  that  it  once  made  your 
favorite  amusement. 

"  I  still  like  it  passably,"  answered  Godolphin  ; "  but  the  gloss 
is  gone  from  the  delusion.  I  am  grown  mournfully  fastidious. 
I  must  have  excellent  acting — an  excellent  play.  A  slight  fault 
— a  slight  deviation  from  nature — robs  me  of  my  content  at  the 
whole." 

"  The  same  fault  in  your  character  pervading  all  things,"  said 
Radclyffe,  half-smiling. 

"  True,"  said  Godolphin,  yawning  ;  "  but  have  you  seen  my 
new  Canova  ?" 

"  No  ;  I  care  nothing  for  statues,  and  I  know  nothing  of  the 
Fine  Arts." 

"  What  a  confession  ! ' 

"  Yes,  it  is  a  rare  confession  :  but  I  suspect  that  the  Arts, 
like  truffles  and  olives,  are  an  acquired  taste.  People  talk 
themselves  into  admiration,  where  at  first  they  felt  indifference. 
But  how  can  you,  Godolphin,  with  your  talents,  fritter  away  life 
on  these  baubles  ?" 

"  You  are  civil,"  said  Godolphin,  impatiently.  "  Allow  me 
to  tell  you  that  it  is  your  objects, /consider  baubles.  Your  dull, 
plodding,  wearisome  honors  ;  a  name  in  the  newspapers :  a 
place,  perhaps,  in  the  Ministry,  purchased  by  a  sacrificed  youth 
and  a  degraded  manhood — a  youtn  in  labor,  a  manhood  in 
schemes.  No,  Radclyffe  !  Give  me  the  bright,  the  glad  sparkle 
of  existence  ;  and,  ere  the  sad  years  of  age  and  sickness,  let  me 
at  least  enjoy.  That  is  wisdom  !  Your  creed  is —  •  But  I  will 
not  imitate  your  rudeness  !  "  and  Godolphin  laughed. 


2i8  GPDOLPHIN. 

"  Certainly,"  replied  Radclyffe,  "  you  do  your  best  to  enjoy 
yourself.  You  live  well,  and  fare  sumptuously  :  your  house  is 
superb,  your  villa  enchanting.  Lady  Erpingham  is  the  hand- 
somest woman  of  her  time  :  and,  as  if  that  were  not  enough,  half 
the  fine  women  in  London  admit  you  at  their  feet.  Yet  you  are 
not  happy." 

'  Ay:  but  who  is  ?  "  cried  Godolphin,  energetically. 

'I  am,"  said  Radclyffe,  dryly. 

'You  !  humph!  " 

'  You  disbelieve  me." 

'  I  have  no  right  to  do  so :  but  are  you  not  ambitious  ?  And 
is  not  ambition  full  of  anxiety,  care, — mortification  at  defeat,  dis- 
appointment in  success?  Does  not  the  very  word  ambition — that 
is,  a  desire  to  be  something  you  are  not — prove  you  discontented 
with  what  you  are? " 

"You  speak  of  a  vulgar  ambition,"  said  Radclyffe. 

"  Most  august  sage  !  And  what  species  of  ambition  is  yours?" 

' '  Not  that  which  you  describe.  You  speak  of  the  ambition 
for  self;  my  ambition  is  singular — it  is  the  ambition  for  others. 
Some  years  ago,  I  chanced  to  form  an  object  in  what  I  considered 
the  welfare  of  my  race.  You  smile.  Nay,  I  boast  no  virtue  in 
my  dream ;  but  philanthropy  was  my  hobby,  as  statues  may  be 
yours.  To  effect  this  object,  I  see  great  changes  are  necessary  : 
I  desire,  I  work,  for  these  great  changes.  I  am  not  blind,  in  the 
meanwhile,  to  glory.  I  desire,  on  the  contrary,  to  obtain  it;  but 
it  would  only  please  me  if  it  came  from  certain  sources.  I  want 
to  feel  that  I  may  realize  what  I  attempt ;  and  wish  for  that  glory 
that  comes  from  the  permanent  gratitude  of  my  species,  not  that 
which  springs  from  their  momentary  applause.  Now,  I  am  vain, 
very  vain  :  vanity  was,  some  years  ago,  the  strongest  characteris- 
tic of  my  nature.  I  do  not  pretend  to  conquer  the  weakness, 
but  to  turn  it  towards  my  purposes.  I  am  vain  enough  to  wish  to 
shine,  but  the  light  must  come  from  deeds  I  think  really 
worthy." 

"  Well,  well!  "  said  Godolphin,  a  little  interested  in  spite  of 
himself;  "but  ambition  of  one  sort  resembles  ambition  of 
another,  inasmuch  as  it  involves  perpetual  harassments  and 
humiliations." 

"Not  so,"  answered  Radclyffe;  "because  when  a  man  is 
striving  for  what  he  fancies  a  laudable  object,  the  goodness  of  his 
intentions  comforts  him  for  a  failure  in  success,  whereas  your  sel- 
fishly ambitious  man  has  no  consolation  in  his  defeats;  he  is 
humbled  by  the  external  world,  and  has  no  inner  world  to  apply 
to  for  consolation." 


GODOLPHIN.  21<) 

"Oh,  man!"  said  Godolphin,  almost  bitterly,  "how  dost 
thou  eternally  deceive  thyself!  Here  is  the  thirst  for  power,  and 
it  calls  itself  the  love  of  mankind." 

"Believe  me,"  said  Radclyffe,  so  earnestly,  and  with  so  deep 
a  meaning  in  his  grave,  bright  eye,  that  Godolphin  was  staggered 
from  his  skepticism ;  "  Believe  me,  they  may  be  distinct  passions, 
and  yet  can  be  united." 

CHAPTER  LHI. 

FANNY  BEHIND   THE  SCENES. — REMINISCENCES  OF  YOUTH. THE 

UNIVERSALITY  OF  TRICK. — THE  SUPPER  AT  FANNY  MILLINGER'S. 
— TALK  ON  A  THOUSAND  MATTERS,  EQUALLY  LIGHT  AND  TRUE. 

FANNY'S  SONG. 

THE  play  was  "  Pizarro,"  and  Fanny  Millinger  acted  Cora. 
Godolphin  and  Radclyffe  went  behind  the  scenes. 

"Ah  !  "  said  Fanny,  as  she  stood  in  her  white  Peruvian  dress, 
waiting  her  turn  to  re-enter  the  stage;  "Ah,  Godolphin!  this 
reminds  me  of  old  times.  How  many  years  have  passed  since  you 
used  to  take  such  pleasure  in  this  mimic  life  !  Well  do  I  remem- 
ber your  musing  eye  and  thoughtful  brow  bent  kindly  on  me  from 
the  stage -box  yonder  :  and  do  you  recollect  how  prettily  you  used 
to  moralize  on  the  deserted  scenes  when  the  play  was  over  ?  And 
you  sometimes  waited  on  these  very  boards  to  escort  me  home. 
Those  times  have  changed.  Heigho  ! 

"Ay,  Fanny,  we  have  passed  through  new  worlds  of  feeling 
since  then.  Could  life  be  to  us  now  what  it  was  at  that  time,  we 
might  love  each  other  anew :  but  tell  me,  Fanny,  has  not  the  ex- 
perience of  life  made  you  a  wiser  woman  ?  Do  you  not  seek  more 
to  enjoy  the  present — to  pluck  Time's  fruit  on  the  bough,  ere  yet 
the  ripeness  is  gone  ?  I  do.  I  dreamed  away  my  youth  ;  I  strive 
to  enjoy  my  manhood." 

"  Then,"  said  Fanny,  with  that  quickness  with  which,  in  mat- 
ters of  the  heart,  women  beat  all  our  philosophy;  "Then  I  can 
prophesy  that,  since  we  parted,  you  have  loved  or  lost  some  one. 
Regret,  which  converts  the  active  mind  into  thedreaming  temper, 
makes  the  dreamer  hurry  into  activity,  whether  of  business  or  of 
pleasure." 

"  Right,"  said  Radclyffe,  as  a  shade  darkened  his  stern  brow. 

"Right,"  repeated  he,  turning  aside  and  soliloquizing;  "and 
those  words  from  an  idle  tongue  have  taught  me  some  of  the  mo- 
tives of  my  present  conduct.  But  away  reflection  !  I  have  re- 
solved to  forswear  it.  My  pretty  Cora  !"  said  he  aloud,  as  he 


220  GODOLPHIN. 

turned  back  to  the  actress,  ' '  you  are  a  very  De  Stael  in  your 
wisdom  :  but  let  us  not  be  wise;  'tis  the  worst  of  our  follies.  Do 
you  not  give  us  one  of  your  charming  suppers  to-night?  " 

"  To  be  sure  :  your  friend  will  join  us.  He  was  once  the  gay- 
est of  the  gay  ;  but  years  and  fame  have  altered  him  a  little." 

"  Radcliffe  gay  !     Bah!  "  said  Godolphin,  surprised. 

"Ay,  you  may  well  look  astonished,"  said  Fanny,  archly; 
'•'  but  note  that  smile — it  tells  of  old  days." 

And  Godolphin  turning  to  his  friend,  saw  indeed  on  the  thin 
iip  of  that  earnest  face  a  smile  so  buoyant,  so  joyous,  that  it 
seemed  as  if  the  whole  character  of  the  man  were  gone  :  but 
while  he  gazed,  the  smile  vanished,  and  Radcliffe  gravely  declined 
the  invitation. 

Cora  was  now  on  the  stage :  a  transport  of  applause  shook  the 
house. 

"  How  well  she  acts  !  "  said  Radclyffe,  warmly. 

"Yes,"  answered  Godolphin,  as  with  folded  arms  he  looked 
quietly  on ;  "  but  what  a  lesson  in  the  human  heart  does  good 
acting  teach  us.  Mark  that  glancing  eye — that  heaving  breast — 
that  burst  of  passion — that  agonized  voice  :  the  spectators  are  in 
tears  !  The  woman's  whole  soul  is  in  her  child  !  Not  a  bit  of 
it !  She  feels  no  more  than  the  boards  we  tread  on  :  she  is  prob- 
ably thinking  of  the  lively  supper  we  shall  have  ;  and  when  she 
comes  off  the  stage,  she  will  cry,  "  Did  I  not  act  it  well?  " 

"  Nay,"  said  Radclyffe,  "  She  probably  feels  while  she  depicts 
the  feeling." 

"  Not  she  :  years  ago  she  told  me  the  whole  science  of  acting 
was  trick ;  and  trick — trick — trick  it  is,  on  the  stage  or  off. 
The  noble  art  of  oratory  (noble  forsooth  !)  is  just  the  same :  phil- 
osophy, poetry — ail,  all  hypocrisy.  '  Damn  the  moon  ! '  said  B 

to  me,  as  we  once  stood  gazing  on  it  at  Venice  ;  '  it  always  gives 
me  the  ague :  but  I  have  described  it  well  in  my  poetry,  Godol- 
phio— eh?"1 

"  But—,"  began  Radclyffe. 

"But  me  no  buts,"  interrupted  Godolphin,  with  the  playful 
pertinacity  which  he  made  so  graceful :  ' '  you  are  younger  than 
I  am ;  when  you  have  lived  as  long,  you  shall  have  a  right  to 
contradict  my  system — not  before." 

Godolphin  joined  the  supper  party.  Like  Godolphin's,  Fanny's 
life  was  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  :  she  lavished  on  it,  in  proportion 
to  her  means,  the  same  cost  and  expense,  though  she  wanted  the 
same  taste  and  refinement.  Generous  and  profuse,  like  all  her 
tribe — like  all  persons  who  win  money  easily — she  was  charitable 
to  all  and  luxurious  in  herself.  The  supper  was  attended  by  four 


GODOLPHIN.  221 

male  guests — Godolphin,  Saville,  Lord  Falconer,  and  Mr.  Wind- 
sor. 

It  was  early  summer :  the  curtains  were  undrawn,  the  windows 
half  opened,  and  the  moonlight  slept  on  the  little  grassplot  that 
surrounded  the  house.  The  guests  were  in  high  spirits.  "  Fill 
me  this  goblet,"  cried  Godolphin  ;  "champagne  is  the  boy's 
liquor  ;  I  will  return  to  it  con  amore.  Fanny,  let  us  pledge  each 
other  :  stay  :  a  toast  !  What  shall  it  be  ?  " 

"Hope,  till  old  age,  and  Memory  afterwards,"  said  Fanny, 
smiling. 

"  Pshaw  !  Theatricals  still,  Fan?  "  growled  Saville,  who  had 
placed  a  large  screen  between  himself  and  the  window ;  "no 
sentiment  between  friends." 

"  Out  on  you,  Saville,"  said  Godolphin;  "  as  well  might  you 
say  no  music  out  of  the  opera  ;  these  verbal  prettinesses  color  con- 
versation. But  you  roues  are  so  d d  prosaic  ;  you  want  us  to 

walk  to  Vice  without  a  flower  by  the  way." 

"  Vice,  indeed  !  "  cried  Saville.  "I  abjure  your  villanous  ap- 
pellatives. It  was  in  your  companionship  that  I  lost  my  charac- 
ter, and  now  you  turn  king's  evidence  against  the  poor  devil  you 
seduced." 

"  Humph  !  "  cried  Godolphin,  gaily ;  "  you  remind  me  of  the 
advice  of  the  Spanish  hidalgo  to  a  servant :  always  choose  a  mas- 
ter with  a  good  memory  :  for,  '  if  he  does  not  pay,  he  will  at  least 
remember  that  he  owes  you.'  In  future,  I  shall  take  care  to  herd 
only  with  those  who  recollect,  after  they  are  finally  debauched, 
all  the  good  advice  I  gave  them  beforehand." 

"Meanwhile,"  said  the  pretty  Fanny,  with  her  arch  mouth 
half- full  of  chicken,  "  I  shall  recollect  that  Mr.  Saville  drinks  his 
wine  without  toasts — as  being  an  useless  delay." 

"  Wine,"  said  Mr.  Windsor,  sententiously,  "wine  is  just  the 
reverse  of  love.  Your  old  topers  are  all  for  coming  at  once  to  the 
bottle,  and  your  old  lovers  for  ever  mumbling  the  toast." 

' '  See  what  you  have  brought  on  yourself,  Saville,  by  affecting 
a  joke  upon  me,"  said  Godolphin:  "  Come,  let  us  make  it  up : 
we  fell  out  with  the  toast — let  us  be  reconciled  by  the  glass. 
Champagne?  " 

"Ay,  anything  for  a  quiet  life, — even  champagne,"  said 
Saville,  with  a  mock  air  of  patience,  and  dropping  his  sharp  fea- 
tures into  a  state  of  the  most  placid  repose.  ' '  You  wits  are  so 
very  severe.  Yes,  champagne  if  you  please.  Fanny,  my  love," 
and  Saville  made  a  wry  face  as  he  put  down  the  scarce-tasted 
glass,  "goon — another  joke,  if  you  please;  I  now  find  lean 
bear  your  satire  better,  at  least,  than  your  wine." 


222  GODOLPHLN. 

Fanny  was  all  bustle  :  it  is  in  these  things  that  the  actress  dif- 
fers from  the  lady — there  is  no  quiet  in  her.  "  Another  bottle  of 
champagne — what  can  have  happened  to  this?"  Poor  Fanny 
was  absolutely  pained.  Saville  enjoyed  it,  for  he  always  revenged 
a  jest  by  an  impertinence. 

"Nay,"  said  Godolphin,  "our  friend  does  but  joke.  Your 
champagne  is  excellent,  Fanny.  Well,  Saville,  and  where  is  young 
Greenhough  ?  He  is  vanished.  Report  says  he  was  marked 
down  in  your  company,  and  has  not  risen  since." 

"  Report  is  the  civilest  jade  in  the  world.  According  to  her, 
all  the  pigeons  disappear  in  my  fields.  But,  seriously  speaking, 
Greenhough  is  off — gone  to  America,  over  head  and  ears  in  debt 
. — debts  of  honor.  Now,"  said  Saville,  very  slowly,  "  there's  the 
difference  between  the  gentleman  and  the  parvenu ;  the  gentle- 
man, when  all  is  lost,  cuts  his  throat :  the  parvenu  only  cuts  his 
creditors.  I  am  really  very  angry  with  Greenhough  that  he  did 
not  destroy  himself.  A  young  man  under  my  protection  and  all : 
so  d — d  ungrateful  in  him." 

' '  He  was  not  much  in  your  debt — eh  ?  ' '  said  Lord  Falconer, 
speaking  for  the  first  time  as  the  wine  began  to  get  into  his  head. 

Saville  looked  hard  at  the  speaker. 

"  Lord  Falconer,  a  pinch  of  stuff :  there  is  something  singularly 
happy  in  your  question  ;  so  much  to  the  point :  you  have  great 
knowledge  of  the  world — great.  He  was  very  much  in  my  debt. 
I  introduced  the  vulgar  dog  into  the  world,  and  he  owes  me  all 
the  thousands  he  had  the  honor  to  lose  in  good  society  !  " 

"Do  you  know,  Percy,"  continued  Saville,  "  do  you  know,  by 
the  way,  that  my  poor  dear  friend  Jasmin  is  dead  ?  Died  after  a 
hearty  game  of  whist.  He  had  just  time  to  cry  *  four  by  honors,' 
when  death  trumped  him.  It  was  a  great  shock  to  me :  he  was 
the  second  best  player  at  Graham's.  Those  sudden  deaths  are 
very  awful — especially  with  the  game  in  one's  hands." 

"Very  mortifying,  indeed,"  seriously  said  Lord  Falconer,  who 
had  just  been  initiated  into  whist. 

"  'Tis  droll,"  said  Saville,  "  to  see  how  often  the  last  words  of 
a  man  tally  with  his  life  ;  'tis  like  the  moral  to  the  fable.  The 
best  instance  I  know  is  in  Lord  Chesterfield,  whose  fine  soul  went 
out  in  that  sublime  and  inimitable  sentence,  '  Give  Mr.  Darrell  a 
chair.'  " 

"  Capital !  "  cried  Lord  Falconer.   "  Saville,  a  game  at  ecartt." 

As  the  lion  in  the  Tower  looked  at  the  lapdog,  so  in  all  the 
compassion  of  contempt  looked  Saville  on  Lord  Falconer. 

"  Infelix  puer  !  "  muttered  Godolphin,  "  Infelix  puer  atque 
impar  congressus  Achilli" 


GODOLPHIN.  223 

"With  all  my  heart,"  said  Saville  at  last.  "Yet,  no — we've 
been  talking  of  death — such  topics  waken  a  man's  conscience. 
Falconer,  I  never  play  for  less  than — ' 

"  Ponies  !     I  know  it  !  "  cried  Falconer,  triumphantly. 

"  Ponies — less  than  chargers  !  " 

' '  Chargers — what  are  chargers  ?  ' ' 

"  The  whole  receipts  of  an  Irish  peer,  Lord  Falconer;  and  I 
make  a  point  never  to  lose  the  first  game." 

"Such  men  are  dangerous,"  said  Mr.  Windsor,  with  his  eyes 
shut. 

"O  Night!"  cried  Godolphin,  springing  up  theatrically, 
' '  thou  wert  made  for  song,  and  moonlight,  and  laughter — but 
woman's  laughter.  Fanny,  a  song ;  the  pretty  quaint  song  you 
sang  me,  years  ago,  in  praise  of  a  town  love  and  an  easy  life." 

Fanny,  who  had  been  in  the  pouts  ever  since  Saville  had  blamed 
the  champagne — for  she  was  very  anxious  to  be  of  bon  ton  in  her 
own  little  way — now  began  to  smile  once  more  ;  and,  as  the  moon 
played  on  her  arch  face,  she  seated  herself  at  the  piano,  and, 
glancing  at  Godolphin,  sang  the  following  song  : 

LOVE  COURTS  THE  PLEASURES. 
I. 

Believe  me,  Love  was  never  made 

In  deserts  to  abide. 
Leave  Age  to  take  the  sober  shade, 

And  Youth  the  sunny  side. 

II. 

Love  dozes  by  the  purling  brook, 

No  friend  to  lonely  places; 
Or,  if  he  toy  with  Strephon's  crook, 

His  Chloes  are  the  Graces. 

III. 

Forsake  "The  Fainting  Town!"  Alas! 

Be  cells  for  saints,  my  own  love ! 
The  wine  of  life's  a  social  glass, 

Nor  may  be  quaffed  alone,  love. 

IV. 

Behold  the  dead  and  solemn  sea, 

To  which  our  beings  flow  ; 
Let  waves  that  soon  so  dark  must  be 

Catch  every  glory  now. 


224  GODOLPHIN. 

V. 

I  would  not  chain  that  heart  to  this, 

To  sicken  at  the  rest ; 
The  cage  we  close  a  prison  is, 

The  open  cage  a  nest. 

CHAPTER  LIV.  * 

THE  CAREER  OF  CONSTANCE. — REAL  STATE  OF  HER  FEELINGS  TO- 
WARDS GODOLPHIN. — RAPID  SUCCESSION  OF  POLITICAL  EVENTS. 
—  CANNING'S  ADMINISTRATION. — CATHOLIC  QUESTION. — LORD 
GREY'S  SPEECH. — CANNING'S  DEATH. 

WHILE  in  scenes  like  these,  alternated  with  more  refined  and 
polished  dissipation,  Godolphin  lavished  away  his  life,  Constance 
became  more  and  more  powerful  as  one  of  the  ornaments  of  a 
great  political,  party.  Few  women  in  England  ever  mixed  more 
actively  in  politics  than  Lady  Erpingham,  or  with  more  remark- 
able ability.  Her  friends  were  out  of  office,  it  is  true ;  but  she 
saw  the  time  approaching  rapidly  when  their  opinions  must  come 
into  power.  She  had  begun  to  love,  for  itself,  the  scheming  of 
political  ambition,  and  in  any  country  but  England  she  would 
have  been  a  conspirator;  and  in  old  times  might  have  risen  to  be 
a  queen;  but  as  it  was,  she  was  only  a  proud,  discontented 
woman.  She  knew,  too,  that  it  was  all  she  could  be — all  that  her 
sex  allowed  her  to  be — yet  did  she  not  the  less  struggle  and  toil 
on.  The  fate  of  her  father  still  haunted  her  ;  her  promise  and 
his  death-bed  still  rose  oft  and  solemnly  before  her ;  the  humilia- 
tions she  had  known  in  her  early  condition,  the  homage  that  had 
attended  her  later  career,  still  cherished  in  her  haughty  soul 
indignation  at  the  faction  he  had  execrated,  and  little  less  of  the 
mighty  class  which  that  faction  represented.  That  system  of 
"  fashion  "  she  had  so  mainly  contributed  to  strengthen,  and 
which  was  originally  by  her  intended  to  build  up  a  standard  of 
opinion,  independent  of  mere  rank,  and  in  defiance  of  mere 
wealth,  she  saw  polluted  and  debased,  by  the  nature  of  its  follow- 
ers, into  a  vulgar  effrontery,  which  was  worse  than  the  more  quiet 
dulness  it  had  attempted  to  supplant.  Yet  still  she  was  comforted 
by  the  thought  that  through  this  system  lay  the  way  to  more 
wholesome  changes.  The  idols  of  rank  and  wealth  once  broken, 
she  believed  that  a  pure  and  sane  worship  must  ultimately  be 
established.  Doubtless  in  the  old  French  regime  there  were  many 
women  who  thought  like  her,  but  there  were  none  who  acted  like 
her — deliberately,  and  with  an  end.  What  an  excellent,  what  a 


GODOLPHIN.  225 

warning  picture  is  contained  in  the  entertaining  Memoirs  of 
Count  Segur !  How  admirably  that  agreeable  gossip  develops 
the  state  of  mind  among  the  nobility  of  France  !  "  Merry 
censurers  of  the  old  customs."  "Enchanted  by  the  philosophy  of 
Voltaire."  "Ridiculing  the  old  system."  "  Embracing  liber- 
ality as  a  fashion."  And  "  gaily  treading  a  soil  bedecked  with 
flowers,  which  concealed  a  precipice  from  their  view!"  In 
England,  there  are  fewer  flowers,  and  the  precipice  will  be  less 
fearful. 

A  certain  disappointment  which  had  attended  her  marriage 
with  Godolphin,  and  the  disdainful  resentment  she  felt  at  the 
pleasures  that  allured  him  from  her,  tended  yet  more  to  deepen 
at  once  her  distaste  for  the  habits  of  a  frivolous  society,  and  to 
nerve  and  concentrate  her  powers  of  political  intrigue.  Her  mind 
grew  more  and  more  masculine ;  her  dark  eye  burnt  with  a 
sterner  fire ;  the  sweet  mouth  was  less  prodigal  of  its  smiles  ;  and 
that  air  of  dignity  which  she  had  always  possessed,  grew  harder 
in  its  character,  and  became  command. 

This  change  did  not  tend  to  draw  Godolphin  nearer  to  her. 
He,  so  susceptible  to  coldness,  so  refining,  so  exacting,  believed 
fully  that  she  loved  him  no  more  ;  that  she  repented  the  marriage 
she  had  contracted.  His  pride  was  armed  against  her  ;  and  he 
sought  more  eagerly  those  scenes  where  all,  for  the  admired,  the 
gallant,  the  sparkling  Godolphin,  wore  smiles  and  sunshine. 

There  was  another  matter  that  rankled  in  his  breast  with  peculiar 
bitterness.  He  had  wished  to  raise  a  large  sum  of  money  (in  the 
purchase  of  some  celebrated  works  of  art),  which  could  only  be 
raised  with  Lady  Erpingham's  consent.  When  he  had  touched 
upon  the  point  to  her,  she  had  not  refused,  but  she  had  hesitated. 
She  seemed  embarrassed,  and,  he  thought,  discontented.  His 
delicacy  took  alarm,  and  he  never  recurred  to  the  question  again ; 
but  he  was  secretly  much  displeased  with  her  reluctant  manner  on 
that  occasion.  Nothing  the  proud  so  little  forget  as  a  coolness 
conceived  upon  money  matters.  In  this  instance,  Godolphin 
afterwards  discovered  that  he  had  wronged  Constance,  and  mis- 
interpreted the  cause  of  her  reluctance. 

Yet,  as  time  flew  on  for  both,  both  felt  a  yearning  of  the  heart 
towards  each  other  ;  and  had  they  been  thrown  upon  a  desert 
island  ;  had  there  been  full  leisure,  full  opportunity,  for  a  frank, 
unfettered  interchange  and  confession  of  thought,  they  would 
have  been  mutually  astonished  to  find  themselves  still  so  beloved, 
and  each  would  have  been  dearer  to  the  other  than  in  their 
warmest  hour  of  earlier  attachment.  But  when  once,  in  a  very 
gay  and  occupied  life,  a  husband  and  wife  have  admitted  a  seem- 
15 


226  GODOLPHIN. 

ing  indifference  to  creep  in  between  them,  the  chances  are  a  thou* 
sand  to  one  against  its  after-removal.  How  much  more  so  with  a 
wife  so  proud  as  Constance,  and  a  husband  so  refining  as  Godol- 
phin  !  Fortunately,  however,  as  I  said  before,  the  temper  of 
each  was  excellent ;  they  never  quarrelled  ;  and  the  indifference, 
therefore,  lay  on  the  surface,  not  at  the  depth.  They  seemed  to 
the  world  an  affectionate  couple,  as  couples  go ;  and  their  union 
would  have  been  classed  by  Rochefoucauld  among  those  marriages 
that  are  very  happy — il  n'y  a  point  de  delicieux. 

Meanwhile,  as  Constance  had  predicted,  the  political  history 
of  the  country  was  marked  by  a  perpetual  progress  towards  liberal 
opinions.  Mr.  Canning  was  now  in  office  :  the  Catholic  Ques- 
tion was  in  every  one's  mouth. 

There  was  a  brilliant  meeting  at  Erpingham  House  ;  those  who 
composed  it  were  of  the  heads  of  the  party :  but  there  were  divis- 
ions amongst  themselves;  some  were  secretly  for  joining  Mr. 
Canning's  administration ;  some  had  openly  done  so ;  others 
remained  in  stubborn  and  jealous  opposition.  With  these  last 
was  the  heart  of  Constance. 

"Well,  well,  Lady  Erpingham,"  said  Lord  Paul  Plympton,  a 
young  nobleman,  who  had  written  a  dull  history,  and  was  there- 
fore considered  likely  to  succeed  in  parliamentary  life  :  "  Well, 
I  cannot  help  thinking  you  are  too  severe  upon  Canning :  he  is 
certainly  very  liberal  in  his  views." 

"  Is  there  one  law  he  ever  caused  to  pass  for  the  benefit  of  the 
working  classes.  No,  Lord  Paul,  his  Whigism  is  for  peers,  and 
his  Toryism  for  peasants.  With  the  same  zeal  he  advocates  the 
Catholic  Question  and  the  Manchester  Massacre." 

"Yet,  surely,"  cried  Lord  Paul,  "you  make  a  difference 
between  the  just  liberality  that  provides  for  property  and  intelli- 
gence, and  the  dangerous  liberality  that  would  slacken  the  reins 
of  an  ignorant  multitude." 

•'  But,"  said  Mr.  Benson,  a  very  powerful  member  of  the  Lower 
House,  "true  politicians  must  conform  to  circumstances.  Can- 
ning may  not  be  all  we  wish,  but  still  he  ought  to  be  supported. 
I  confess  that  I  shall  be  generous  :  I  care  not  for  office,  I  care  not 
for  power;  but  Canning  is  surrounded  with  enemies,  who  are 
enemies  also  to  the  people ;  for  that  reason  I  shall  support  him." 

"  Bravo,  Benson  !  "  cried  Lord  Paul. 

"Bravo,  Benson!"  echoed  two  or  three  notables,  who  had 
waited  an  opportunity  to  declare  themselves ;  < '  that's  what  I  call 
handsome." 

"  Manly !  " 

"  Fair  1  " 


GODOLPHIN.  227 

"Disinterested,  by  Jove!  " 

Here  the  Duke  of  Aspindale  suddenly  entered  the  room.  "  Ah, 
Lady  Erpingham,  you  should  have  been  in  the  Lords'  to-night : 
such  a  speech  !  Canning  is  crushed  forever." 

' '  Speech  !  from  whom  ?  ' ' 

"  Lord  Grey — terrific :  it  was  the  vengeance  of  a  life  concen- 
trated into  one  hour  ;  it  has  shaken  the  Ministry  fearfully," 

"  Humph  !  "  said  Benson,  rising;  "  I  shall  go  to  Brooks's  and 
hear  more." 

"And  I,  too,"  said  Lord  Paul. 

A  day  or  two  after,  Benson,  in  presenting  a  petition,  alluded  in 
terms  of  high  eulogy  to  the  masterly  speech  made  ' '  in  another 
place";  and  Lord  Paul  Plympton  said,  "It  was  indeed  une- 
qualled." 

That's  what  I  call  handsome. 

Manly ! 

Fair! 

Disinterested,  by  Jove ! 

And  Canning  died ;  his  gallant  soul  left  the  field  of  politics 
broken  into  a  thousand  petty  parties.  From  the  time  of  his  death 
the  two  great  hosts  into  which  the  strugglers  for  power  were 
divided  have  never  recovered  their  former  strength.  The  demar- 
cation that  his  policy  had  tended  to  efface  was  afterwards  more 
weakened  by  his  successor,  the  Duke  of  Wellington ;  and  had  it 
not  been  for  the  question  of  Reform  that  again  drew  the  stragglers 
on  either  side  around  one  determined  banner,  it  is  likely  that 
Whig  and  Tory  would,  among  the  many  minute  sections  and 
shades  of  difference,  have  lost  forever  the  two  broad  distinguish- 
ing colors  of  their  separate  factions. 

Mr.  Canning  died ;  and  now,  with  redoubled  energy,  went  on 
the  wheels  of  political  intrigue.  The  rapid  succession  of  short- 
lived administrations,  the  leisure  of  a  prolonged  peace,  the  pres- 
sure of  debt,  the  writings  of  philosophers,  all,  insensibly,  yet 
quickly,  excited  that  popular  temperament  which  found  its  crisis 
in  the  Reform  Bill. 

CHAPTER  LV. 

THE  DEATH  OF  GEORGE  IV. THE  POLITICAL  SITUATION  OF  PARTIES, 

AND  OF  LADY  ERPINGHAM. 

THE  death  of  George  the  Fourth  was  the  birth  of  a  new  era. 
During  the  later  years  of  that  monarch  a  silent  spirit  had  been 


-28  GODOLPHi:,'. 

gathering  over  the  land,  which  had  crept  even  to  the  very  walls  o» 
his  seclusion.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  various  expenses  of 
his  reign — no  longer  consecrated  by  the  youthful  graces  of  the 
prince,  no  longer  disguised  beneath  the  military  triumphs  of  the 
people — had  contributed  far  more  than  theoretical  speculations 
to  the  desire  of  political  change.  The  shortest  road  to  liberty 
lies  through  attenuated  pockets ! 

Constance  was  much  at  Windsor  during  the  King's  last  illness, 
one  of  the  saddest  periods  that  ever  passed  within,  the  walls  of  a 
palace.  The  memorialists  of  the  reign  of  the  magnificent  Louis 
XIV.  will  best  convey  to  the  reader  a  notion  of  the  last  days  of 
George  the  Fourth.  For,  like  that  great  king,  he  was  the  repre- 
sentation in  himself  of  a  particular  period,  and  he  preserved  much 
of  the  habits  of  (and  much  too  of  the  personal  interest  attached 
to)  his  youth,  through  the  dreary  decline  of  age.  It  was  melan- 
choly to  see  one  who  had  played,  not  only  so  exalted,  but  so  gal- 
lant, a  part,  breathing  his  life  away ;  nor  was  the  gloom  dimin- 
ished by  the  many  glimpses  of  a  fine  original  nature,  which  broke 
forth  amidst  infirmity  and  disease. 

George  the  Fourth  died ;  his  brother  succeeded ;  and  the  Eng- 
lish world  began  to  breathe  more  freely,  to  look  around,  and  to 
feel  that  the  change,  long  coming,  was  come  at  last.  The  French 
Revolution,  the  new  Parliament,  Henry  Brougham's  return  for 
Yorkshire,  Mr.  Hume's  return  for  Middlesex,  the  burst  of  aston- 
ished indignation  at  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  memorable  words 
against  reform,  all  betrayed,  while  they  ripened,  the  signs  of  the 
new  age.  The  Whig  Ministry  was  appointed — appointed  amidst 
discontents  in  the  city,  suspicions  amongst  the  friends  of  the  peo- 
ple, amidst  fires  and  insurrections  in  the  provinces,  convulsions 
abroad,  and  turbulence  at  home. 

The  situation  of  Constance,  in  these  changes,  was  rather  curi- 
ous ;  her  intimacy  with  the  late  King  was  no  recommendation 
with  the  Whig  government  of  his  successor.  Her  power,  as  the 
power  of  fashion  always  must. in  stormy  times,  had  received  a 
shock ;  and  as  she  had  of  late  been  a  little  divided  from  the  main 
body  of  the  Whigs,  she  did  not  share  at  once  in  their  success,  or 
claim  to  be  one  of  their  allies.  She  remained  silent  and  aloof; 
her  parties  were  numerous  and  splendid  as  ever,  but  the  small 
plotting  reunions  of  political  intriguers  were  suspended.  She 
hinted  mysteriously  at  the  necessity  of  pausing,  to  see  what  reform 
the  new  ministers  would  recommend,  and  what  economy  they 
would  effect.  The  Tories,  especially  the  more  moderate  tribe, 
began  to  court  her;  the  Whigs,  flushed  with  their  triumph,  and 
too  busy  to  think  of  women,  began  to  neglect.  This  lastcircum- 


GODOLPHIN.  229 

stance  the  high  Constance  felt  keenly — but  with  the  keenness 
rather  of  scorn  than  indignation,  years  had  deepened  her  secret 
disgust  at  all  aristocratic  ordinances,  and  looking  rather  at  what 
the  Whigs  had  been  than  what,  pressed  by  the  times,  they  have 
become,  she  regarded  them  as  only  playing  with  democratic 
counters  for  aristocratic  rewards.  She  repaid  their  neglect  with 
contempt,  and  the  silent  neutralist  soon  became  regarded  by  them 
as  the  secret  foe. 

But  Constance  was  sufficiently  the  woman  to  feel  mortified  and 
wounded  by  that  which  she  affected  to  despise.  No  post  at  court 
had  been  offered  to  her  by  her  former  friends  ;  the  confidant  of 
George  the  Fourth  had  ceased  to  be  the  confidant  of  Lord  Grey. 
Arrived  at  that  doubtful  time  of  life  when  the  beauty,  although 
possessing,  is  no  longer  assured  of,  her  charms-,  she  felt  the  decay 
of  her  personal  influence  as  a  personal  affront ;  and  thus  vexed, 
wounded,  alarmed,  in  her  mid-career,  Constance  was  more  than 
ever  sensible  of  the  peculiar  disquietudes  that  await  female  ambi- 
tion, and  turned  with  sighs  more  frequent  than  heretofore  to  the 
recollections  of  that  domestic  love  which  seemed  lost  to  her 
forever. 

Mingled  with  the  more  outward  and  visible  stream  of  politics 
there  was,  as  there  ever  is,  a  latent  tide  of  more  theoretic  and  specu- 
lative opinions.  While  the  practical  politicians  were  playing 
their  momentary  parts,  schemers,  and  levellers,  were  propagating 
in  all  quarters  doctrines  which  they  fondly  imagined  were 
addressed  to  immortal  ends.  And  Constance  began  to  turn  with 
some  curiosity  to  these  charlatans  or  sages.  The  bright  Countess 
listened  to  their  harangues,  pondered  over  their  demonstrations, 
and  mused  over  their  hopes.  But  she  had  lived  too  much  on  the 
surface  of  the  actual  world,  her  habits  of  thought  were  too  essen- 
tially worldly,  to  be  converted,  while  she  was  attracted,  by  doc- 
trines so  startling  in  their  ultimate  conclusions.  She  turned  once 
more  to  herself,  and  waited,  in  a  sad  and  thoughtful  stillness,  the 
progress  of  things,  convinced  only  of  the  vanity  of  them  all. 

CHAPTER  LVI. 

THE  ROUE  HAS  BECOME  A  VALETUDINARIAN. — NEWS. — A  FORTUNE- 
TELLER. 

MEANWHILE  the  graced  Godolphin  floated  down  the  sunny  tide 
of  his  prosperity.  He  lived  chiefly  with  a  knot  of  epicurean  dal- 
liers  with  the  time,  whom  he  had  selected  from  the  wittiest  and 
the  easiest  of  the  London  world.  Dictator  of  theatres — patron 


23°  GODOLPttlN. 

of  operas — oracle  in  music — mirror  of  entertainments  and  equip- 
age— to  these  conditions  had  his  natural  genius  and  his  once 
dreaming  dispositions  been  bowed  at  last !  A  round  of  dissipa- 
tion, however,  left  him  no  time  for  reflection ;  and  he  believed 
(perhaps  he  was  not  altogether  wrong),  that  the  best  way  to  pre- 
serve the  happy  equilibrium  of  the  heart  is  to  blunt  its  suscepti- 
bilities. As  the  most  uneven  shapes,  when  whirled  into  rapid 
and  ceaseless  motion,  will  appear  a  perfect  circle,  so,  once  impel- 
led in  a  career  that  admits  no  pause,  our  life  loses  its  uneven 
angles,  and  glides  on  in  smooth  and  rounded  celerity,  with  false 
aspects  more  symmetrical  than  the  truth. 

One  day  Godolphin  visited  Saville ;  who  now,  old,  worn,  and 
fast  waning  to  the  grave,  cropped  the  few  flowers  on  the  margin, 
and  jested,  but  with  sourness,  on  his  own  decay.  He  found  the 
actress  (who  had  also  come  to  visit  the  Man  of  Pleasure)  sitting 
by  the  window,  and  rattling  away  with  her  usual  vivacity,  while 
she  divided  her  attention  with  the  labors  of  knitting  a  purse. 

"Heaven  only  knows,"  said  Saville,  "what  all  these  times  will 
produce.  I  lose  my  head  in  the  dizzy  quickness  of  events. 
Fanny,  hand  me  my  snuff-box.  Well,  I  fancy  my  last  hour  is  not 
far  distant ;  but  I  hope,  at  least,  I  shall  die  a  gentleman.  I  have 
a  great  dislike  to  the  thought  of  being  revolutionized  into  a 
roturier.  That's  the  only  kind  of  revolution  I  have  any  notion 
about.  What  do  you  say  to  all  this,  Godolphin  ?  Every  one  else 
is  turning  politician  ;  young  Sunderland  whirls  his  cab  down  to 
the  House  at  four  o'clock  every  day ;  dines  at  Bellamy's  on  cold 
beef;  and  talks  of  nothing  but  that  d — d  good  speech  of  Sir 
Robert's  !  Revolution  !  Faith,  the  revolutions  only  change  the 
aspect  of  society ;  is  it  not  changed  enough  within  the  last  six 
months?  Bah  !  I  suppose  you  are  bit  by  the  mania?  " 

"  Not  I !  While  I  live  I  will  abjure  the  vulgar  toil  of  ambition. 
Let  others  rule  or  ruin  the  State — like  the  Due  de  Lauzun,  while 
the  guillotine  is  preparing,  I  will  think  only  of  my  oysters  and 
my  champagne." 

"  A  noble  creed  !  "  said  Fanny,  smiling  :  "let  the  world  go 
to  wreck,  and  bring  me  my  biscuit  !  That's  Godolphin's  motto." 

"It  is  life's  motto." 

"Yes — a  gentleman's  life." 

"  Pish  !  Fanny;  no  satire  from  you  :  you,  who  are  not  (pro- 
perly speaking)  even  a  tragic  actress !  But  there  is  something 
about  your  profession  sublimely  picturesque  in  the  midst  of  these 
noisy  brawls.  The  storms  of  nations  shake  not  the  stage ;  you 
are  wrapt  in  another  life ;  the  atmosphere  of  poetry  girds  you. 
You  are  like  the  fairies  who  lived  among  men,  visible  only  at 


GODOLPHIN.  23! 

night,  and  playing  their  fantastic  tricks  amidst  the  surrounding 
passions — the  sorrow,  the  crime,  the  avarice,  the  love,  the  wrath, 
the  luxury,  the  famine,  that  belong  to  the  grosser  dwellers  of  the 
earth.  You  are  to  be  envied,  Fanny." 

"Not  so  ;  I  am  growing  old." 

"Old!"  cried  Saville;  "Ah,  talk  not  of  it !  Ugh!  Ugh! 
Curse  this  cough !  But  hang  politics ;  it  always  brings  disagree- 
able reflections.  Glad,  my  old  pupil, — glad  am  I  to  see  that  you 
still  retain  your  august  contempt  for  these  foolish  strugglers — 
insects  splashing  and  panting  in  the  vast  stream  of  events,  which 
they  scarcely  stir,  and  in  which  they  scarcely  drop  before  they 
are  drowned — " 

"  Or  the  fishes,  their  passions,  devour  them,"  said  Godolphin. 

"  News  !  "  cried  Saville  ;  "let  us  have  real  news  ;  cut  all  the 
politics  out  of  the  Times,  Fanny,  with  your  scissors,  and  then 
read  me  the  rest." 

Fanny  obeyed. 

"  <  Fire  in  Marylebone !  *  " 

"  That's  not  news  !  Skip  that." 

"  «  Letter  from  Radical.'  " 

"Stuff!  What  else?" 

"  '  Emigration — No  fewer  than  sixty-eight —  '  " 

"Hold  !  for  Mercy's  sake  !  What  do  I,  just  going  out  of  the 
world,  care  for  people  only  going  out  of  the  country  ?  Here, 
child,  give  the  paper  to  Godolphin  ;  he  knows  exactly  what  inter- 
ests a  man  of  sense." 

"  '  Sale  of  Lord  Lysart's  wines — '  " 

' '  Capital  ! ' '  cried  Saville :  ' '  that 's  news — that 's  interesting ! ' ' 

Fanny's  pretty  hands  returned  to  their  knitting.  When  the 
wines  had  been  discussed,  the  following  paragraph  was  chanced 
upon : 

"  There  is  a  foolish  story  going  the  round  of  the  papers  about 
Lord  Grey  and  his  vision ;  the  vision  is  only  in  the  silly  heads  of 
the  inventors  of  the  story,  and  the  ghost  is,  we  suppose,  the  appa- 
rition of  Old  Sarum.  By  the  way,  there  is  a  celebrated  fortune- 
teller, or  prophetess,  now  in  London,  making  much  noise.  We 
conclude  the  discomfited  Tories  will  next  publish  her  oracular 
discourses.  She  is  just  arrived  in  time  to  predict  the  passing  of 
the  Reform  Bill,  without  any  fear  of  being  proved  an  impostor." 

"Ah,  by  the  by,"  said  Saville,  "  I  hear  wonders  of  this  sor- 
ceress. She  dreams  and  divines  with  the  most  singular  accuracy; 
and  all  the  old  women  of  both  sexes  flock  to  her  in  hackney- 
coaches,  making  fools  of  themselves  to-day  in  order  to  be  wise  to- 
morrow. Have  you  seen  her,  Fanny?  " 


232  GODOLPHIN. 

"Yes,"  replied  the  actress,  very  gravely;  "and,  in  sober 
earnest,  she  has  startled  me.  Her  countenance  is  so  striking,  her 
eyes  so  wild,  and  in  her  conversation  there  is  so  much  enthusiasm, 
that  she  carries  you  away  in  spite  of  yourself.  Do  you  believe  in 
astrology,  Percy?" 

"  I  almost  did  once,"  said  Godolphin,  with  a  half  sigh ;  "  but 
does  this  female  seer  profess  to  choose  astrology  in  preference  to 
cards  ?  The  last  is  the  more  convenient  way  of  tricking  the  pub- 
lic." 

"  Oh,  but  this  is  no  vulgar  fortune-teller,  I  assure  you,"  cried 
Fanny,  quite  eagerly:  "she  dwells  much  on  magnetism  ;  insists 
on  the  effect  of  your  own  imagination  ;  discards  all  outward 
quackeries ;  and,  in  short,  has  either  discovered  a  new  way  of 
learning  the  future,  or  revived  some  forgotten  trick  of  deluding 
the  public.  Come  and  see  her,  some  day,  Godolphin." 

"No,  I  don't  like  that  kind  of  imposture,"  said  Godolphin 
quickly,  and  turning  away,  he  sank  into  a  silent  and  gloomy 
revery. 

CHAPTER  LVII. 

SUPERSTITION. — ITS   WONDERFUL   EFFECTS. 

IT  was  perfectly  true  that  there  had  appeared  in  London  a  per- 
son of  the  female  sex  who,  during  the  last  few  years,  had  been 
much  noted  on  the  Continent  for  the  singular  boldness  with  which 
she  had  promulgated  the  wildest  doctrines,  and  the  supposed 
felicity  which  had  attended  her  vaticinations.  She  professed  be- 
lief in  all  the  dogmas  that  preceded  the  dawn  of  modern  philoso- 
phy; and  a  strange,  vivid,  yet  gloomy  eloquence  that  pervaded 
her  language  gave  effect  to  theories  which,  while  incomprehensible 
to  the  many,  were  alluring  to  the  few.  None  knew  her  native 
country,  although  she  was  believed  to  come  from  the  North  of 
Europe.  Her  way  of  life  was  lonely,  her  habits  eccentric ;  she 
sought  no  companionship;  she  was  beautiful,  but  not  of  this 
earth's  beauty;  men  admired,  but  courted  not;  she,  at  least, 
lived  apart  from  the  reach  of  human  passions.  In  fact,  the  strange 
Liehbur,  for  such  was  the  name  the  prophetess  was  known  by 
(and  she  assumed  before  it  the  French  title  of  Madame),  was  not 
an  impostor,  but  a  fanatic:  the  chords  of  the  brain  were  touched, 
and  the  sound  they  gave  back  was  erring  and  imperfect.  She  was 
mad,  but  with  a  certain  method  in  her  madness ;  a  cold,  and  pre- 
ternatural, and  fearful  spirit  abode  within  her,  and  spoke  from  her 


GODOLPHIN.  233 

lips ;  its  voice  froze  herself,  and  she  was  more  awed  by  her  own 
oracles  than  her  listeners  themselves. 

In  Vienna  and  in  Paris  her  renown  was  great,  and  even  terri- 
ble :  the  greatest  men  in  those  capitals  had  consulted  her,  and 
spoke  of  her  decrees  with  a  certain  reverence;  her  insanity  thrill- 
ed them,  and  they  mistook  the  cause.  Besides,  on  the  main,  she 
was  right  in  the  principle  she  addressed  :  she  worked  on  the 
imagination,  and  the  imagination  afterwards  fulfilled  what  she 
predicted.  Every  one  knows  what  dark  things  may  be  done  by 
our  own  fantastic  persuasions;  belief  ensures  the  miracles  it  cred- 
its. Men  dream  they  shall  die  within  a  certain  hour;  the  hour 
comes,  and  the  dream  is  realized.  The  most  potent  wizardries 
are  less  potent  than  fancy  itself.  Macbeth  was  a  murderer,  not 
because  the  witches  predicted,  but  because  their  prediction  arous- 
ed the  thought  of  murder.  And  this  principle  of  action  the  pro- 
phetess knew  well :  she  appealed  to  that  attribute  common  to  us 
all,  the  foolish  and  the  wise,  and  on  that  fruitful  ground  she  sow- 
ed her  sooth-sayings. 

In  London  there  are  always  persons  to  run  after  anything  new, 
and  Madame  Liehbur  became  at  once  the  rage.  I  myself  have 
seen  a  minister  hurrying  from  her  door  with  his  cloak  about  his 
face ;  and  one  of  the  coldest  of  living  sages  confesses  that  she 
told  him  what  he  believes,  by  mere  human  means,  she  could  not 
have  discovered.  Delusion  all !  But  what  age  is  free  from  it  ?  The 
race  of  the  nineteenth  century  boast  their  lights,  but  run  as  madly 
after  any  folly  as  their  fathers  in  the  eighth.  What  are  the  pro- 
phecies of  St.  Simon  but  a  species  of  sorcery  ?  Why  believe  the 
external  more  than  the  inner  miracle  ? 


There  were  but  a  few  persons  present  at  Lady  Erpingham's, 
and  when  Radclyffe  entered,  Madame  Liehbur  was  the  theme  of 
the  general  conversation.  So  many  anecdotes  were  told  ;  so  much 
that  was  false  was  mingled  with  so  much  that  seemed  true;  that 
Lady  Erpingham's  curiosity  was  excited,  and  she  resolved  to  seek 
the  modern  Cassandra  with  the  first  opportunity.  Godolphin  sat 
apart  from  the  talkers,  playing  a  quiet  game  at  icarte.  Con- 
stance's eyes  stale  ever  and  anon  to  his  countenance ;  and  when 
she  turned  at  length  away  with  a  sigh,  she  saw  that  Radclyffe's 
deep  and  inscrutable  gaze  was  bent  upon  her,  and  the  proud 
Countess  blushed,  although  she  scarce  knew  why. 


234  GO  DOLPHIN. 

CHAPTER  LVIII. 

THE  EMPIRE  OF  TIME  AND  OF  LOVE. — THE  PROUD  CONSTANCE  GROWN 
WEARY  AND  HUMBLE. — AN  ORDEAL. 

ABOUT  this  time  the  fine  constitution  of  Lady  Erpingham  began 
to  feel  the  effects  of  that  life  which,  at  once  idle  and  busy,  is  the 
most  exhausting  of  all.  She  suffered  under  no  absolute  illness  \ 
she  was  free  from  actual  pain  ;  but  a  fever  crept  over  her  at  night, 
and  a  languid  debility  succeeded  it  the  next  day.  She  was  melan- 
choly and  dejected ;  tears  came  into  her  eyes  without  a  cause ;  a 
sudden  noise  made  her  tremble ;  her  nerves  were  shaken, — terri- 
ble disease,  which  marks  a  new  epoch  in  life,  which  is  the  first 
token  that  our  youth  is  about  to  leave  us ! 

It  is  in  sickness  that  we  feel  our  true  reliance  on  others,  especi- 
ally if  it  is  of  that  vague  and  not  dangerous  character  when  those 
around  us  are  not  ashamed  or  roused  into  attendance ;  when  the 
care,  and  the  soothing,  and  the  vigilance,  are  the  result  of  that 
sympathy  which  true  and  deep  love  only  feels.  This  thought 
broke  upon  Constance  as  she  sat  alone  one  morning  in  that  mood 
when  books  cannot  amuse,  nor  music  lull,  nor  luxury  soothe — 
the  mood  of  an  aching  memory  and  a  spiritless  frame.  Above 
her,  and  over  the  mantelpiece  of  her  favorite  room,  hung  that  pic- 
ture of  her  father  which  I  have  before  described  ;  it  had  been  long 
since  removed  from  Wendover  Castle  to  London,  for  Constance 
wished  it  to  be  frequently  in  her  sight.  "Alas  !  "  thought  she, 
gazing  upon  the  proud  and  animated  brow  that  bent  down  upon 
her  ;  "  Alas  !  though  in  a  different  sphere,  thy  lot,  my  father,  has 
been  mine  ;  toil  unrepaid,  affection  slighted,  sacrifices  forgotten — 
a  harder  lot  in  part;  forthou  hadst,  at  least,  in  thy  stirring  and 
magnificent  career,  continued  excitement  and  perpetual  triumph. 
But  I,  a  woman  shut  out  by  my  sex  from  contest,  from  victory, 
am  left  only  the  thankless  task  to  devise  the  rewards  which  others 
are  to  enjoy;  the  petty  plot,  the  poor  intrigue,  the  toil  without 
the  honor,  the  humiliation  without  the  revenge ;  yet  have  I 
worked  in  thy  cause,  my  father,  and  thou — thou,  couldst  thou  see 
my  heart,  wouldst  pity  and  approve  me." 

As  Constance  turned  away  her  eyes,  they  fell  on  the  opposite 
mirror,  which  reflected  her  still  lofty  but  dimmed  and  faded 
beauty ;  the  worn  cheek,  the  dejected  eye,  those  lines  and  hol- 
lows which  tell  the  progress  of  years  !  There  are  certain  moments 
when  the  time  we  have  been  forgetting  makes  its  march  suddenly 
apparent  to  our  own  eyes;  when  the  change  we  have  hitherto 
marked  not  stares  upon  us  rude  and  abrupt ;  we  almost  fancy 


GODOLPHIM.  235 

those  lines,  those  wrinkles,  planted  in  a  single  hour,  so  unperceived 
have  they  been  before.  And  such  a  moment  was  this  to  the 
beautiful  Constance :  she  started  at  her  own  likeness,  and  turned 
involuntarily  from  the  unflattering  mirror.  Beside  it,  on  her 
table,  lay  a  locket,  given  her  by  Godolphin  just  before  they 
married,  and  containing  his  hair ;  it  was  a  simple  trifle,  and  the 
simplicity  seemed  yet  more  striking  amidst  the  costly  and  modern 
jewels  that  were  scattered  round  it.  As  she  looked  on  it,  her 
heart,  all  woman  still,  flew  back  to  the  day  on  which,  whispering 
eternal  love,  he  hung  it  round  her  neck.  "Ah,  happy  days! 
would  that  they  could  return  !  "  sighed  the  desolate  schemer; 
and  she  took  the  locket,  kissed  it,  and  softened  by  all  the  num- 
berless recollections  of  the  past,  wept  silently  over  it.  "And 
yet,"  she  said,  after  a  pause,  and  wiping  away  her  tears,  "and 
yet  this  weakness  is  unworthy  of  me.  Lone,  sad,  ill,  broken  in 
frame  and  spirit  as  I  am,  he  comes  not  near  me ;  I  am  nothing  to 
him,  nothing  to  any  one  in  the  wide  world.  My  heart,  my  heart, 
reconcile  thyself  to  thy  fate  !  What  thou  hast  been  from  my 
cradle,  that  shalt  thou  be  to  my  grave.  I  have  not  even  the  ten- 
derness of  a  child  to  look  to — the  future  is  all  blank  ! " 

Constance  was  yet  half  yielding  to,  half  struggling  with,  these 
thoughts,  when  Stainforth  Radclyffe  (to  whom  she  was  never 
denied)  was  suddenly  announced.  Time,  which,  sooner  or  later, 
repays  perseverance,  although  in  a  deceitful  coin,  had  brought  to 
Radclyffe  a  solid  earnest  of  future  honors.  His  name  had  risen 
high  in  the  science  of  his  country ;  it  was  equally  honored  by 
the  many  and  the  few ;  he  had  become  a  marked  man — one  of 
whom  all  predicted  a  bright  hereafter.  He  had  not  yet,  it  is 
true,  entered  Parliament — usually  the  great  arena  in  which  Eng- 
lish reputations  are  won — but  it  was  simply  because  he  had 
refused  to  enter  it  under  the  auspices  of  any  patron ;  and  his 
political  knowledge,  his  depth  of  thought,  and  his  stern,  hard, 
ambitious  mind  were  not  the  less  appreciated  and  acknowledged. 
Between  him  and  Constance  friendship  had  continued  to 
strengthen,  and  the  more  so  as  their  political  sentiments  were  in 
a  great  measure  the  same,  although  originating  in  different  causes 
— hers  from  passion,  his  from  reflection. 

Hastily  Constance  turned  aside  her  face,  and  brushed  away  her 
tears,  as  Radclyffe  approached ;  and  then  seeming  to  busy  her- 
self amongst  some  papers  that  lay  scattered  on  her  escritoire,  and 
gave  her  an  excuse  for  concealing  in  part  her  countenance,  she 
said,  with  a  constrained  cheerfulness:  "I  am  happy  you  are 
come  to  relieve  my  ennui ;  I  have  been  looking  over  letters,  writ- 
ten §p  many  years  ago,  that  I  have  been  forced  to  remember  how 


236  GODOLPHIN. 

soon  I  shall  cease  to  be  young  ;  no  pleasant  reflection  foi  any  one, 
much  less  a  woman." 

"  I  am  at  a  loss  for  a  compliment  in  return,  as  you  may  sup- 
pose," answered  Radclyffe;  "but  Lady  Erpingham  deserves  a 
penance  for  even  hinting  at  the  possibility  of  being  ever  less 
charming  than  she  is ;  so  I  shall  hold  my  tongue." 

"  Alas  !  "  said  Constance,  gravely,  "  how  little,  save  the  mere 
triumphs  of  youth  and  beauty,  is  left  to  our  sex  !  How  much, 
nay,  how  entirely,  in  all  other  and  loftier  objects,  is  our  ambi- 
tion walled  in  and  fettered  !  The  human  mind  must  have  its 
aim,  its  aspiring ;  how  can  your  sex  blame  us,  then,  for  being 
frivolous,  when  no  aim,  no  aspiring,  save  those  of  frivolity,  are 
granted  us  by  society?  " 

"  And  is  love  frivolous?  "  said  Radcylffe;  "  is  the  Empire  of 
the  Heart  nothing?" 

"  Yes  !  "  exclaimed  Constance,  with  energy;  "for  the  empire 
never  lasts.  We  are  slaves  to  the  empire  we  would  found  ;  we 
wish  to  be  loved,  but  we  only  succeed  in  loving  too  well  ourselves. 
We  lay  up  our  all — our  thoughts,  hopes,  emotions,  all  the  treas- 
ure of  our  hearts — in  one  spot ;  and  when  we  would  retire  from 
the  deceits  and  cares  of  life,  we  find  the  sanctuary  walled  against 
us — we  love,  and  are  loved  no  longer  !  " 

Constance  had  turned  round  with  the  earnestness  of  the  feel- 
ing she  expressed  ;  and  her  eyes,  still  wet  with  tears,  her  flushed 
cheek,  her  quivering  lip,  struck  to  Radclyffe's  heart  more  than 
her  words.  He  rose  involuntarily;  his  own  agitation  was  marked ; 
he  moved  several  steps  towards  Constance,  and  then  checked  the 
impulse,  and  muttered  indistinctly  to  himself. 

"No,"  said  Constance,  mournfully,  and  scarcely  heeding  him, 
"it  is  in  vain  for  us  to  be  ambitious.  We  only  deceive  our- 
selves; we  are  not  stern  and  harsh  enough  for  the  passion. 
Touch  our  affections,  and  we  are  recalled  at  once  to  the  sense  of 
our  weakness ;  and  I — I — would  to  God  that  I  were  a  humble 
peasant  girl,  and  not — not  what  I  am  !  " 

So  saying,  the  lofty  Constance  sank  down,  overpowered  with 
the  bitterness  of  her  feelings,  and  covered  her  face  with  her  hands. 
Was  Radclyffe  a  man  that  he  could  see  this  unmoved  ?  That  he 
could  hear  those  beautiful  lips  breathe  complaints  for  the  want  of 
love,  and  not  acknowledge  the  love  that  burned  at  his  own  heart  ? 
Long,  secretly,  resolutely,  had  he  struggled  against  the  passion 
for  Constance,  which  his  frequent  intercourse  with  her  had  fed, 
and  which  his  consciousness,  that  in  her  was  the  only  parallel  to 
himself  that  he  had  ever  met  within  her  sex,  had  first  led  him  to 
form ;  and  now  alone,  neglected,  sad,  this  haughty  woman  wept 


GODOLPHIN.  237 

over  her  unloved  lot  in  his  presence,  and  still  he  was  not  at  her 
feet  !  He  spoke  not,  moved  not,  but  his  breath  heaved  thick, 
and  his  face  was  as  pale  as  death.  He  conquered  himself.  All 
within  Radclyffe  obeyed  the  idol  he  had  worshipped,  even  before 
Constance ;  all  within  him,  if  ardent  and  fiery,  was  also  high  and 
generous.  The  acuteness  of  his  reason  permitted  him  no  self- 
sophistries  ;  and  he  would  have  laid  his  head  on  the  block  rather 
than  breathe  a  word  of  that  love,  which  he  knew,  from  the  mo- 
ment it  was  confessed,  would  become  unworthy  of  Constance  and 
himself. 

There  was  a  pause.  Lady  Erpingham,  ashamed,  confounded 
at  her  own  weakness,  recovered  herself  slowly  and  in  silence. 
Radclyffe  at  length  spoke ;  and  his  voice,  at  first  trembling  and 
indistinct,  grew,  as  he  proceeded,  clear  and  earnest. 

"Never,"  said  he,  "shall  I  forget  the  confidence  your  emo- 
tions have  testified  in  my — my  friendship ;  I  am  about  to  deserve 
it.  Do  not,  my  dear  friend  (let  me  so  call  you),  do  not  forget, 
that  life  is  too  short  for  misunderstandings  in  which  happiness  is 
concerned.  You  believe  that — that  Godolphin  does  not  repay 
the  affection  you  have  borne  him :  do  not  be  angry,  dear  Lady 
Erpingham ;  I  feel  it  indelicate  in  me  to  approach  that  subject, 
but  my  regard  for  you  emboldens  me.  I  know  Godolphin's 
heart ;  he  may  seem  light,  neglectful,  but  he  loves  you  as  deeply 
as  ever ;  he  loves  you  entirely. ' ' 

Constance,  humbled  as  she  was,  listened  in  breathless  silence ; 
her  cheek  burned  with  blushes,  and  those  blushes  were  at  once  to 
Radclyffe  a  torture  and  a  reward. 

"At  this  moment,"  continued  he,  with  constrained  calmness, 
"  at  this  moment  he  fancies  in  you  that  very  coldness  you  lament 
in  him.  Pardon  me,  Lady  Erpingham ;  but  Godolphin's  nature 
is  wayward,  mysterious,  and  exacting.  Have  you  consulted, 
have  you  studied  it  sufficiently?  Note  it  well,  soothe  it;  and  if 
his  love  can  repay  you,  you  will  be  repaid.  God  bless  you,  dear- 
est Lady  Erpingham." 

In  a  moment  more,  Radclyffe  had  left  the  apartment. 

CHAPTER  LIX. 

CONSTANCE  MAKES  A  DISCOVERY  THAT  TOUCHES  AND  ENLIGHTENS 
HER  AS  TO  GODOLPHIN'S  NATURE. — AN  EVENT,  ALTHOUGH  IN 
PRIVATE  LIFE,  NOT  WITHOUT  ITS  INTEREST. 

IF  Constance  most  bitterly  reproached  herself,  or  rather  her 
Blackened  nerves,  her  breaking  health,  that  she  had  before  an- 


238  GODOLPHIN. 

other — that  other,  too,  not  of  her  own  sex — betrayed  her  de- 
pendence upon  even  her  husband's  heart  for  happiness ;  if  her 
conscience  instantly  took  alarm  at  the  error  (and  it  was  indeed  a 
grave  one)  which  had  revealed  to  any  man  her  domestic  griefs  ; 
yet,  on  the  other  hand,  she  could  not  control  the  wild  thrill  of 
delight  with  which  she  recalled  those  words  that  had  so  solemnly 
assured  her  she  was  still  beloved  by  Godolphin.  She  had  a  firm 
respect  in  Radclyffe's  penetration  and  his  sincerity,  and  knew 
that  he  Avas  one  neither  to  deceive  her,  nor  be  deceived  himself. 
His  advice,  too,  came  home  to  her.  Had  she,  indeed,  with  suf- 
ficient address,  sufficient  softness,  insinuated  herself  into  Godol- 
phin's  nature?  Neglected  herself,  had  she  not  neglected  in  re- 
turn? She  asked  herself  this  question,  and  was  never  weary  of 
examining  her  past  conduct.  That  Radclyffe,  the  austere  and 
chilling  Radclyffe,  entertained  for  her  any  feeling  warmer  than 
friendship,  she  never  for  an  instant  suspected ;  that  suspicion 
alone  would  have  driven  him  from  her  presence  forever.  And  al- 
though there  had  been  a  time,  in  his  bright  and  exulting  youth, 
when  Radclyffe  had  not  been  without  those  arts  which  win,  in 
the  opposite  sex,  affection  from  aversion  itself,  those  arts  doubled, 
ay,  a  hundred-fold,  in  their  fascination  would  not  have  availed 
him  with  the  pure  but  disappointed  Constance,  even  had  a  sense 
of  right  and  wrong  very  different  from  the  standard  he  now  ac- 
knowledged permitted  him  to  exert  them.  So  that  his  was  rather 
the  sacrifice  of  impulse,  than  of  any  triumph  that  impulse  could 
afterwards  have  gained  him. 

Many,  and  soft,  and  sweet,  were  now  the  recollections  of  Con- 
stance. Her  heart  flew  back  to  her  early  love  among  the  shades 
of  Wendovef  ;  to  the  first  confession  of  the  fair,  enthusiastic  boy, 
when  he  offered  at  her  shrine  a  mind,  a  genius,  a  heart  capable  of 
fruits  which  the  indolence  of  after-life,  and  the  lethargy  of  dis- 
appointed hope,  had  blighted  before  their  time. 

If  he  was  now  so  deaf  to  what  she  considered  the  noble,  be- 
cause more  stirring,  excitements  of  life,  was  she  not  in  some 
measure  answerable  for  the  supineness?  Had  there  not  been  a  day 
in  which  he  had  vowed  to  toil,  to  labor,  to  sacrifice  the  very  char- 
acter of  his  mind,  for  an  union  with  her?  Was  she,  after  all, 
was  she  right  to  adhere  so  rigidly  to  her  father's  dying  words, 
and  to  that  vow  afterwards  confirmed  by  her  own  pride  and  bit- 
terness of  soul  ?  She  looked  to  her  father's  portrait  for  an  ans- 
wer ;  and  that  daring  and  eloquent  face  seemed,  for  the  first  time, 
cold  and  unanswering  to  her  appeal. 

In  such  meditations  the  hours  passed,  and  midnight  came  on 
without  Constance  having  quitted  her  apartment,  She  now  sum- 


GODOLPHIN.  239 

moned  her  woman,  and  inquired  if  Godolphin  was  at  home,  He 
had  come  in  about  an  hour  since,  and,  complaining  of  fatigue, 
had  retired  to  rest.  Constance  again  dismissed  her  maid,  and 
stole  to  his  apartment.  He  was  already  asleep  ;  his  cheek  rested 
on  his  arm,  and  his  fair  hair  fell  wildly  over  a  brow  that  now 
worked  under  the  influence  of  his  dreams.  Constance  put  the 
light  softly  down,  and  seating  herself  beside  him,  watched  over  a 
sleep  which,  if  it  had  come  suddenly  on  him,  was  not  the  less 
unquiet  and  disturbed.  At  length  he  muttered  :  "  Yes,  Lucilla, 
yes ;  I  tell  you,  you  are  avenged.  I  have  not  forgotten  you  !  I 
have  not  forgotten  that  I  betrayed,  deserted  you  !  But  was  it  my 
fault  ?  No,  no !  Yet  I  have  not  the  less  sought  to  forget  it. 
These  poor  excesses — these  chilling  gaieties — were  they  not  in- 
curred for  you?  And  now  you  come — you — ah,  no! — spare 
me!" 

Shocked  and  startled,  Constance  drew  back.  Here  was  a  new 
key  to  Godolphin's  present  life,  his  dissipation,  his  thirst  for 
pleasure.  Had  he  indeed  sought  to  lull  the  stings  of  conscience  ? 
And  she,  instead  of  soothing,  of  reconciling  him  to  the  past,  had 
she  left  him  alone  to  struggle  with  bitter  and  unresting  thoughts, 
and  to  contrast  the  devotion  of  the  one  lost  with  the  indifference 
of  the  one  gained?  She  crept  back  to  her  own  chamber,  to  com- 
mune with  her  heart  and  be  still. 

"  My  dear  Percy,"  said  she,  the  next  day,  when  he  carelessly 
sauntered  into  her  boudoir  before  he  rode  out,  "  I  have  a  favor  to 
ask  of  you." 

"  Who  ever  denied  a  favor  to  Lady  Erpingham?" 

"Not  you,  certainly  ;  but  my  favor  is  a  great  one." 

"It  is  granted." 

"  Let  us  pass  the  summer  in shire." 

Godolphin's  brow  grew  clouded. 

"  At  Wendover  Castle  ?"  said  he,  after  a  pause. 

"We  have  never  been  there  since  our  marriage,"  said  Con- 
stance, evasively. 

"  Humph  !  as  you  will." 

"  It  was  the  place,"  said  Constance,  "  where  you,  Percy,  first 
told  me  you  loved  !  " 

The  tone  of  his  wife's  voice  struck  on  the  right  chord  in  Go- 
dolphin's  breast;  he  looked  up,  and  saw  her  eyes  full  of  tears, 
and  fixed  upon  him. 

"Why,  Constance, "  said  he,  much  affected,  "  who  would  have 
thought  that  you  still  cherished  that  remembrance  !  " 

"Ah!  when  shall  I  foreet  it  ?"  said  Constance ;  "  then  you. 
loved  me  !  " 


240  GODOLPHIN. 

"And  was  rejected." 

"  Hush  !  but  I  believe  now  that  I  was  wrong." 

"No,  Constance;  you  were  wrong,  for  your  own  happiness, 
that  the  rejection  was  not  renewed." 

"  Percy  !  " 

"  Constance  !  "  and  in  the  accent  of  that  last  word  there  was 
something  that  encouraged  Constance,  and  she  threw  herself  into 
Godolphin's  arms,  and  murmured  : 

"  If  I  have  offended,  forgive  me ;  let  us  be  to  each  other  what 
we  once  were. 

Words  like  these  from  the  lips  of  one  in  whom  such  tender 
supplication,  such  feminine   yearnings,   were  not  common,  sub- 
dued Godolphin  at  once.     He  folded  her  in  his  arms,  and  kiss 
ing  her  passionately,  whispered:    "Be  always  thus,  Constance, 
and  you  will  be  more  to  me  than  ever." 

CHAPTER  LX. 

THE   REFORM  BILL. — A  VERY  SHORT  CHAPTER. 

THE  reconciliation  was  not  so  shortlived  as  matters  of  the  kind 
frequently  are.  There  is  a  Chinese  proverb  which  says :  "How- 
near  are  two  hearts  when  there  is  no  deceit  between  them  !  "  And 
the  misunderstanding  of  their  mutual  sentiments  being  removed, 
their  affection  became  at  once  visible  to  each  other.  And  Con- 
stance, reproaching  herself  for  her  former  pride,  mingled  in  her 
manner  to  her  husband,  a  gentle,  even  an  humble,  sweetness, 
which,  being  exactly  that  which  he  had  most  desired  in  her,  was 
what  most  attracted  him. 

At  this  time,  Lord  John  Russell  brought  forward  the  Bill  of 
Parliamentary  Reform.  Lady  Erpingham  was  in  the  lantern  of 
the  House  of  Commons  on  that  memorable  night ;  like  every  one 
else,  her  feelings  at  first  were  all  absorbed  in  surprise.  She  went 
home ;  she  hastened  to  Godolphin's  library.  Leaning  his  head 
on  his  hand,  that  strange  person,  in  the  midst  of  events  that  stir- 
red the  destinies  of  Europe,  was  absorbed  in  the  old  subtleties  of 
Spinosa.  In  the  frank  confidence  of  revived  love,  she  put  her 
hand  upon  his  shoulder,  and  told  him  rapidly  that  news  which 
was  then  on  its  way  to  terrify  or  delight  the  whole  of  England. 

"Will  this  charm  you,  dear  Constance?"  said  he,  kindly  ; 
"  Is  it  a  blow  to  the  party  you  hate,  and  I  sympathize  with — or — ' ' 

"  My  Father !"  interrupted  Constance,  passionately,  "would 
to  Heaven  he  had  seen  this  day  !  It  was  this  system,  the  patron 


GODOLPHIN.  £41 

and  the  nominee  system,  that  crushed,  and  debased,  and  killed 
him.  And  now,  I  shall  see  that  system  destroyed  !  " 

"  So,  then,  my  Constance  will  go  over  to  the  Whigs  in  earn- 
est?" 

"  Yes,  because  I  shall  meet  there  truth  and  the  people  !  " 

Godolphin  laughed  gently  at  the  French  exaggeration  of  the 
saying,  and  Constance  forgave  him. 

The  fine  ladies  of  London  were  a  little  divided  as  to  the  merits 
of  the  "  Bill";  Constance  was  the  first  that  declared  in  its  favor. 
She  was  an  important  ally — as  important,  at  least,  as  a  woman 
can  be.  A  bright  spirit  reigned  in  her  eye  ;  her  step  grew  more 
elastic ;  her  voice  more  glad.  This  was  the  happiest  time  of  her 
life — she  was  happy  in  the  renewal  of  her  love,  happy  in  the 
approaching  triumph  of  her  hate. 

CHAPTER  LXL* 

THE  SOLILOQUY  OF  THE  SOOTHSAYER. — AN  EPISODICAL  MYSTERY, 
INTRODUCED  AS  A  TYPE  OF  THE  MANY  THINGS  IN  LIFE  THAT  ARE 
NEVER  ACCOUNTED  FOR. — GRATUITOUS  DEVIATIONS  FROM  OUR 
COMMON  CAREER. 

IN  Leicester  Square  there  is  a  dim  old  house,  which  I  have  but 
this  instant  visited,  in  order  to  bring  back  more  vividly  to  my  rec- 
ollection the  wild  and  unhappy  being  who,  for  some  short  time, 
inhabited  its  old-fashioned  and  gloomy  chambers. 

In  that  house,  at  the  time  I  now  speak  of,  lodged  the  myster- 
ious Liehbur.  It  was  late  at  noon,  and  she  sat  alone  in  her  apart- 
ment, which  was  darkened  so  as  to  exclude  the  broad  and  peering 
sun.  There  was  no  trick,  nor  sign  of  the  fallacious  art  she  pro- 
fessed, visible  in  the  large  and  melancholy  room.  One  or  two 
books  in  the  German  language  lay  on  the  table  beside  which  she 
sat :  but  they  were  of  the  recent  poetry,  and  not  of  the  departed 
dogmas,  of  the  genius  of  that  tongue.  The  enthusiast  was  alone ; 
and,  with  her  hand  supporting  her  chin,  and  her  eyes  fixed  on 
vacancy,  she  seemed  feeding  in  silence  the  thoughts  that  flitted  to 
and  fro  athwart  a  brain  which  had  for  years  lost  its  certain  guide ; 
a  deserted  mansion,  whence  the  lord  had  departed,  and  where 
spirits  not  of  this  common  life  had  taken  up  their  haunted  and 
desolate  abode.  And  never  was  there  a  countenance  better  suited 
to  the  character  which  this  singular  woman  had  assumed.  Rich, 
thick  auburn  hair  was  parted  loosely  over  a  brow  in  which  the 
large  and  full  temples  would  have  betrayed  to  a  phrenologist  the 
great  preponderance  which  the  dreaming  and  the  imaginative 
16 


242  GODOLPHIN. 

bore  over  the  sterner  faculties.  Her  eyes  were  deep,  intense,  but 
of  the  bright  and  wandering  glitter  which  is  so  powerful  in  its 
effect  on  the  beholder,  because  it  betokens  that  thought  which  is 
not  of  this  daily  world,  and  inspires  that  fear,  that  sadness,  that 
awe,  which  few  have  looked  on  the  face  of  the  insane  and  not 
experienced.  Her  features  were  still  noble,  and  of  the  fair  Greek 
symmetry  of  the  painter's  Sibyl ;  but  the  cheeks  were  worn  and 
hollow,  and  one  bright  spot  alone  broke  their  marble  paleness ; 
her  lips  were,  however,  full,  and  yet  red,  and,  by  their  uncertain 
and  varying  play,  gave  frequent  glimpses  of  teeth  lustrously 
white ;  which,  while  completing  the  beauty  of  her  face,  aided — 
with  somewhat  of  a  fearful  effect — the  burning  light  of  her  strange 
eyes,  and  the  vague,  mystic  expression  of  her  abrupt  and  unjoy- 
ous  smile.  You  might  see,  when  her  features  were,  as  now,  in  a 
momentary  repose,  that  her  health  was  broken,  and  that  she  was 
not  long  sentenced  to  wander  over  that  world  where  the  soul  had 
already  ceased  to  find  its  home ;  but  the  instant  she  spoke,  her 
color  deepened,  and  the  brilliant  and  rapid  alternations  of  her 
countenance  deceived  the  eye,  and  concealed  the  ravages  of  the 
worm  that  preyed  within. 

"Yes,"  said  she,  at  last  breaking  silence,  and  soliloquizing  in 
the  English  tongue,  but  with  somewhat  of  a  foreign  accent; 
"  Yes,  I  am  in  his  city ;  within  a  few  paces  of  his  home ;  I  have  seen 
him,  I  have  heard  him.  Night  after  night — in  rain,  and  in  the 
teeth  of  the  biting  wind — I  have  wandered  round  his  home.  Ay ! 
and  I  could  have  raised  my  voice,  and  shrieked  a  warning  and  a 
prophecy,  that  should  have  startled  him  from  his  sleep  as  the 
trumpet  of  the  last  angel !  but  I  hushed  the  sound  within  my  soul, 
and  covered  the  vision  with  a  thick  silence.  Oh,  God !  what  have 
I  seen,  and  felt,  and  known,  since  he  last  saw  me  !  But  we  shall 
meet  again  ;  and  ere  the  year  has  rolled  round,  I  shall  feel  the 
touch  of  his  lips  and  die !  Die  !  What  calmness,  what  luxury  in 
the  world  !  The  fiery  burden  of  this  dread  knowledge  I  have 
heaved  upon  me,  shuffled  off;  memory  no  more;  the  past,  the 
present,  the  future  exorcised  ;  and  a  long  sleep,  with  bright  dreams 
of  a  lulling  sky,  and  a  silver  voice,  and  his  presence!  " 

The  door  opened,  and  a  black  girl  of  about  ten  years  old,  in 
the  costume  of  her  Moorish  tribe,  announced  the  arrival  of  a  new 
visitor.  The  countenance  of  Madame  Liehbur  changed  at  once 
into  an  expression  of  cold  and  settled  calmness;  she  ordered  the 
visitor  to  be  admitted ;  and  presently,  Stainforth  Radclyffe 
entered  the  room. 

*  *  *  * 

"Thou  mistakest   me   and   my   lore,"  said  the  diviner;   "I 


6ODOLPHIN.  243 

meddle  not  with  the  tricks  and  schemes  of  the  worldly  ;  I  show 
the  truth,  not  garble  it." 

"  Pshaw  !  "  said  Radclyffe,  impatiently  ;  "this  jargon  cannot 
deceive  me.  You  exhibit  your  skill  for  money,  I  ask  one  exer- 
tion of  it,  and  desire  you  to  name  your  reward.  Let  us  talk 
after  the  fashion  of  this  world,  and  leave  that  of  the  other  to  our 
dupes." 

"Yet,  thou  hast  known  grief  too,"  said  the  diviner,  musingly, 
' '  and  those  who  have  sorrowed  ought  to  judge  more  gently  of 
each  other.  Wilt  thou  try  my  art  on  thyself,  ere  thou  askest  it  for 
others  ?  ' ' 

"  Ay,  if  you  could  restore  the  dead  to  my  dreams." 

' '  I  can  !  ' '  replied  the  soothsayer,  sternly. 

Radclyffe  laughed  bitterly.  "  Away  with  this  talk  to  me ;  or, 
if  you  would  convince  me,  raise  at  once  the  spectre  I  desire  to 
see  !  " 

"And  dost  thou  think,  vain  man,"  replied Liehbur,  haughtily, 
"that  I  pretend  to  the  power  thou  speakest  of?  Yes;  but  not  as 
the  impostors  of  old  (dull  and  grcss,  appealing  to  outward  spells, 
and  spells  wrought  by  themselves  alone)  affected  to  do  ?  I  can 
bring  the  dead  before  thee,  but  thou  thyself  must  act  upon  thy- 
self." 

"  Mummery  !     What  would  you  drive  at  ?  " 

' '  Wilt  thou  fast  three  days,  and  for  three  nights  abstain  from 
sleep,  and  then  visit  me  once  again? " 

"  No,  fair  deluder ;  such  a  preliminary  is  too  much  to  ask  of  a 
Neophyte.  Three  days  without  food,  and  three  nights  without 
sleep  !  Why  you  would  have  to  raise  myself  from  the  dead  !  " 

"And  canst  thou,"  said  the  diviner,  with  great  dignity, 
' '  canst  thou  hope  that  thou  wouldst  be  worthy  of  a  revelation 
from  a  higher  world ;  that  for  thee  the  keys  of  the  Grave  should 
unlock  their  awful  treasure,  and  the  Dead  return  to  life,  when 
thou  scruplest  to  mortify  thy  flesh  and  loosen  the  earthly  bonds 
that  cumber  and  chain  the  spirit  ?  I  tell  thee,  that  only  as  the 
soul  detaches  itself  from  the  frame,  can  its  inner  and  purer  sense 
awaken,  and  the  full  consciousness  of  the  invisible  and  divine 
things  that  surround  it  descend  upon  its  powers." 

"  And  what,"  said  Radclyffe,  startled  more  by  the  countenance 
and  voice  than  the  words  themselves  of  the  soothsayer ;  "what 
would  you  then  do,  supposing  that  I  perform  this  penance?  " 

"  Awaken  to  their  utmost  sense,  even  to  pain  and  torture,  the 
naked  nerves  of  that  Great  Power  thou  callest  the  IMAGINATION  ; 
that  Power  which  presides  over  dreams  and  visions,  which  kindles 
song,  and  lives  in  the  Heart  of  Melodies ;  which  inspired  the 


244  GODOLPHIN. 

Magian  of  the  East  and  the  Pythian  voices,  and,  in  the  storms 
and  thunder  of  savage  lands  originated  the  notion  of  a  God  and 
the  seeds  of  human  worship  ;  that  vast  presiding  Power  which,  to 
the  things  of  mind,  is  what  the  Deity  is  to  the  Universe  itself— 
the  Creator  of  all.  I  would  awaken.  I  say,  that  Power  from  its 
customary  sleep  where,  buried  in  the  heart  it  folds  its  wings,  and 
lives  but  by  fits  and  starts,  unquiet,  but  unaroused  ;  and  by  that 
Power  thou  wouldst  see,  and  feel,  and  know,  and  through  it 
only  thou  wouldst  exist.  So  that  it  would  be  with  thee,  as  if  the 
body  were  not .  as  if  thou  wert  already  all-spiritual,  all-living.  So 
thou  wouldst  learn  in  life  that  which  may  be  open  to  thee  after 
death ;  and  so,  soul  might  now,  as  hereafter,  converse  with  soul, 
and  revoke  the  Past,  and  sail  prescient  down  the  dark  tides  of  the 
Future.  A  brief  and  fleeting  privilege,  but  dearly  purchased  : 
be  wise,  and  disbelieve  in  it ;  be  happy,  and  reject  it !  " 

Radclyffe  was  impressed,  despite  himself,  by  the  solemn  novelty 
of  this  language,  and  the  deep  mournfulness  with  which  the 
soothsayer's  last  sentence  died  away. 

"And  how,"  said  he,  after  a  pause,  "  How,  and  by  what  arts, 
would  you  so  awaken  the  imaginative  faculty  ?  ' ' 

"Ask  not  until  the  time  comes  for  the  trial,"  answered  Lieh- 
bur. 

"  But  can  you  awaken  it  in  all  ?  The  dull,  the  unideal,  as  in 
the  musing  and  exalted  ?  " 

"  No  !  but  the  dull  and  unideal  will  not  go  through  the  neces- 
sary ordeal.  Few  besides  those  for  whom  Fate  casts  her  great 
parts  in  life's  drama,  ever  come  to  that  point  when  I  can  teach 
them  the  future." 

"  Do  you  mean  that  your  chief  votaries  are  among  the  great? 
Pardon  me,  I  should  have  thought  the  most  superstitious  are  to  be 
found  among  the  most  ignorant  and  lowly." 

"  Yes  ;  but  they  consult  only  what  imposes  on  their  credulity, 
without  demanding  stern  and  severe  sacrifice  of  time  and  enjoy- 
ment, as  I  do.  The  daring,  the  resolute,  the  scheming,  with 
their  souls  intent  upon  great  objects  and  high  dreams — those  are 
the  men  who  despise  the  charms  of  the  moment ;  who  are  cove- 
tous of  piercing  the  far  future  ;  who  know  how  much  of  their 
hitherward  career  has  been  brightened,  not  by  genius  or  nature, 
but  some  strange  confluence  of  events,  some  mysterious  agency 
of  fate.  The  great  are  always  fortunate,  and  therefore  mostly 
seekers  into  the  decrees  of  fortune." 

So  great  is  the  influence  which  enthusiasm,  right  or  wrong, 
always  exercises  over  us,  that  even  the  hard  and  acute  Radclyffe 
— \yho  had  entered  the  room  with  the  most  profound  contempt 


GODOLPHIN.  245 

for  the  pretensions  of  the  soothsayer,  and  partly  from  a  wish  to 
find  materials  for  ridiculing  a  folly  of  the  day,  partly,  it  may  be, 
from  the  desire  to  examine  which  belonged  to  his  nature — began 
to  consider  in  his  own  mind  whether  he  should  yield  to  his  curi- 
osity, now  strongly  excited,  and  pledge  himself  to  the  preliminary 
penance  the  diviner  had  ordained. 

The  soothsayer  continued  : 

"The  stars,  and  the  clime,  and  the  changing  moon,  have 
power  over  us — why  not?  Do  they  not  have  influence  over  the 
rest  of  nature  ?  But  we  can  only  unravel  their  more  august  and 
hidden  secrets  by  giving  full  wing  to  the  creative  spirit  which  first 
taught  us  their  elementary  nature,  and  which  when  released  from 
earth,  will  have  full  range  to  wander  over  their  brilliant  fields. 
Know,  in  one  word,  the  Imagination  and  the  Soul  are  onet  one 
indivisible  and  the  same  ;  on  that  truth  rests  all  my  lore." 

"  And  if  I  followed  your  precepts,  what  other  preliminaries 
would  you  enjoin  ?  ' ' 

' '  Not  until  thou  engagest  to  perform  them,  will  I  tell  thee 
more." 

"  I  engage  !  " 

"  And  swear?" 

' '  I  swear  !  ' ' 

The  soothsayer  rose — and — 


CHAPTER  LXII. 

IN  WHICH  THE  COMMON  LIFE  GLIDES  INTO  THE  STRANGE. EQUALLY 

TRUE,  BUT  THE  TRUTH  NOT  EQUALLY  ACKNOWLEDGED. 

IT  was  on  the  night  of  this  interview  that  Constance,  coming 
into  Godolphin's  room,  found  him  leaning  against  the  wall,  pale, 
and  agitated,  and  almost  insensible.  "Percy — Percy,  you  are 
ill !  "  she  exclaimed,  and  wound  her  arms  around  his  neck.  He 
looked  at  her  long  and  wistfully,  breathing  hard  all  the  time, 
until  at  length  he  seemed  slowly  to  recover  his  self-possession, 
and  seating  himself,  motioned  Constance  to  do  the  same.  After 
a  pause,  he  said,  clasping  her  hand, 

"Listen  to  me,  Constance.  My  health,  I  fear,  is  breaking;  I 
am  tormented  by  fearful  visions ;  I  am  possessed  by  some  magic 
influence.  For  several  nights  successively,  before  falling  asleep, 
a  cold  tremor  has  gradually  pervaded  my  frame ;  the  roots  of  my 
hair  stand  on  end  ;  my  teeth  chatter  ;  a  vague  horror  seizes  me  ; 
my  blood  seems  turned  to  a  solid  substance,  so  curdled  and  stag- 


246  GODOLPHIN. 

nant  is  it.  I  strive  to  speak,  to  cry  out,  but  my  voice  clings  to 
the  roof  of  my  mouth  ;  I  feel  that  I  have  no  longer  power  over 
myself.  Suddenly,  and  in  the  very  midst  of  this  agony,  I  fall  into 
a  heavy  sleep;  then  come  strange  bewildering  dreams,  with 
Volktman's  daughter  forever  presiding  over  them ;  but  with  a 
changed  countenance,  calm,  unutterable  calm,  and  gazing  on  me 
with  eyes  that  burn  into  my  soul.  The  dream  fades,  I  wake  with 
the  morning,  but  exhausted  and  enfeebled.  I  have  consulted 
physicians ;  I  have  taken  drugs ;  but  I  cannot  break  the  spell 
— the  previous  horror  and  the  after-dreams.  And  just  now, 
Constance,  just  now — you  see  the  window  is  open  to  the 
park,  the  gate  of  the  garden  is  unclosed — I  happened  to  lift 
my  eyes,  and  lo !  gazing  upon  me  in  the  sickly  moonlight, 
was  the  countenance  of  my  dreams — Lucilla's,  but  how  altered  ! 
Merciful  Heaven  !  Is  it  mockery,  or  can  the  living  Lucilla  really 
be  in  England?  And  have  these  visions,  these  terrors,  been  part 
of  that  mysterious  sympathy  which  united  us  ever,  and  which  her 
father  predicted  should  cease  but  with  our  lives  ?  " 

The  emotions  of  Godolphin  were  so  really  visible,  and  in  the 
present  instance  were  so  unaffected,  and  so  roused,  that  Constance 
could  not  summon  courage  to  soothe,  to  cheer  him  ;  she  herself 
was  alarmed  and  shocked,  and  glanced  fearfully  towards  the  win- 
dow, lest  the  apparition  he  had  spoken  of  should  reappear.  All 
without  was  still ;  not  a  leaf  stirred  on  the  trees  in  the  Mall ;  no 
human  figure  was  to  be  seen.  She  turned  again  to  Godolphin, 
and  kissed  the  drops  from  his  brow,  and  pressed  his  cheek  to  her 
bosom. 

"  I  have  a  presentiment,"  said  he,  "  that  something  dreadful 
will  happen  shortly.  I  feel  as  if  I  were  near  some  great  crisis  of 
my  life  :  and  as  if  I  were  about  to  step  from  the  bright  and  pal- 
pable world  into  regions  of  cloud  and  darkness.  Constance, 
strange  misgivings  as  to  my  choice  in  my  past  life  haunt  and  per- 
plex me.  I  have  sought  only  the  present ;  I  have  abjured  all 
toil,  all  ambition,  and  laughed  at  the  future ;  my  hand  has 
plucked  the  rose-leaves  and  now  they  lie  withered  in  my  grasp. 
My  youth  flies  me — age  scowls  on  me  from  the  distance  ;  an  age 
of  frivolities  that  I  once  scorned  ;  yet — yet,  had  I  formed  a  different 
creed,  how  much  I  might  have  done  !  But — but,  out  on  this 
cant !  My  nerves  are  shattered,  and  I  prate  nonsense.  Lend  me 
your  arm,  Constance ;  let  us  go  into  the  saloon,  and  send  for 
music  !  " 

And  all  that  night  Constance  watched  by  the  side  of  Godolphin, 
and  marked  in  mute  terror  the  convulsions  that  wrung  his  sleep, 
the  foam  that  gathered  to  his  lip,  the  cries  that  broke  from  his 


GODOLPHIN.  247 

tongue.  But  she  was  rewarded  when,  with  the  gray  dawn,  he 
awoke,  and,  catching  her  tender  and  tearful  gaze,  flung  himself 
upon  her  bosom,  and  bade  God  bless  her  for  her  love  ! 

CHAPTER  LXIII. 

A  MEETING  BETWEEN  CONSTANCE  AND  THE  PROPHETESS. 

A  STRANGE  suspicion  had  entered  Constance's  mind,  and  for 
Godolphin's  sake  she  resolved  to  put  it  to  the  proof.  She  drew 
her  mantle  round  her  stately  figure,  put  on  a  large  disguising  bon- 
net, and  repaired  to  Madame  Liehbur's  house. 

The  Moorish  girl  opened  the  door  to  the  Countess  ;  and  her 
strange  dress,  her  African  hue  and  features,  relieved  by  the  long, 
glittering  pendants  in  her  ears,  while  they  seemed  suited  to  the 
eccentric  reputation  of  her  mistress,  brought  a  slight  smile  to  the 
proud  lip  of  Lady  Erpingham,  as  she  conceived  them  a  part  of 
the  charlatanism  practised  by  the  soothsayer.  The  girl  only 
replied  to  Lady  Erpingham's  question  by  an  intelligent  sign ;  and 
running  lightly  up  the  stairs,  conducted  the  guest  into  an  ante- 
room, where  she  waited  but  for  a  few  moments  before  she  was 
admitted  into  Madame  Liehbur's  apartment. 

The  effect  that  the  personal  beauty  of  the  diviner  always  pro- 
duced on  those  who  beheld  her  was  not  less  powerful  than  usual 
on  the  surprised  and  admiring  gaze  of  Lady  Erpingham.  She 
bowed  her  haughty  brow  with  involuntary  respect,  and  took  the 
seat  to  which  the  enthusiast  beckoned. 

"And  what,  lady,"  said  the  soothsayer,  in  the  foreign  music 
of  her  low  voice,  "  what  brings  thee  hither?  Wouldst  them  gain, 
or  hast  thou  lost,  that  gift  our  poor  sex  prizes  so  dearly  beyond  its 
value?  Is  it  of  love  that  thou  wouldst  speak  to  the  interpreter  of 
dreams  and  the  priestess  of  the  things  to  come?  " 

While  the  bright-eyed  Liehbur  thus  spoke,  the  Countess  exam- 
ined through  her  veil  the  fair  face  before  her,  comparing  it  with 
that  description  which  Godolphin  had  given  her  of  the  sculptor's 
daughter,  and  her  suspicion  acquired  new  strength. 

"I  seek  not  that  which  you  allude  to,"  said  Constance ;  "  but 
of  the  future,  although  without  any  definite  object,  I  would  indeed 
like  to  question  you.  All  of  us  love  to  pry  into  dark  recesses  hid 
from  our  view,  and  over  which  you  profess  the  empire." 

"Your  voice  is  sweet,  but  commanding,"  said  the  oracle; 
"  and  your  air  is  stately,  as  of  one  born  in  courts.  Lift  your  veil, 
that  I  may  gaze  upon  your  face,  and  tell  by  its  lines  the  fate  you? 
character  has  shaped  for  you." 


248  GODOLPHIN. 

"  Alas  !"  answered  Constance,  "life  betrays  few  of  its  past 
signs  by  outward  token.  If  you  have  no  wiser  art  than  that  drawn 
from  the  lines  and  features  of  our  countenances,  I  shall  still  remain 
what  I  am  now — an  unbeliever  in  your  powers." 

"  The  brow,  and  the  lip,  and  the  eye,  and  the  expression  of 
each  and  all,"  answered  Liehbur,  "  are  not  the  lying  index  you 
suppose  them." 

"Then,"  rejoined  Constance,  "  by  those  signs  will  I  read  your 
own  destiny,  as  you  would  read  mine." 

The  sibyl  started,  and  waved  her  hand  impatiently;  but  Con- 
stance proceeded. 

' '  Your  birth,  despite  your  fair  locks,  was  under  a  southern  sky  ; 
you  were  nursed  in  the  delusions  you  now  teach ;  you  were  loved, 
and  left  alone ;  you  are  in  the  country  of  your  lover.  Is  it  not 
so?  Am  I  not  an  oracle  in  my  turn?  " 

The  mysterious  Liehbur  fell  back  in  her  chair ;  her  lips  apart 
and  blanched — her  hands  clasped — her  eyes  fixed  upon  her  visi- 
tant. 

"  Who  are  you?  "  she  cried  at  last,  in  a  shrill  tone  ;  "  Who, 
of  my  own  sex,  knows  my  wretched  history  ?  Speak,  speak  ! — 
in  mercy  speak  !  Tell  me  more  !  Convince  me  that  you  have 
but  vainly  guessed  my  secret,  or  that  you  have  a  right  to  know 
it!" 

"  Did  not  your  father  forsake,  for  the  blue  skies  of  Rome,  his 
own  colder  shores?  "  continued  Constance,  adopting  the  height- 
ened and  romantic  tone  of  the  one  she  addressed;  "and  Percy 
Godolphin — is  that  name  still  familiar  to  the  ear  of  Lucilla  Volkt- 
man?" 

A  loud,  long  shriek  burst  from  the  lips  of  the  soothsayer,  and 
she  sank  at  once  lifeless  on  the  ground.  Greatly  alarmed,  and 
repenting  her  own  abruptness,  Constance  hastened  to  her  assist- 
ance. She  lifted  the  poor  being,  whom  she  unconsciously  had 
once  contributed  so  deeply  to  injure,  from  the  ground ;  she 
loosened  her  dress,  and  perceived  that  around  her  neck  hung  a 
broad  ivory  necklace  wrought  with  curious  characters,  and  many 
uncouth  forms  and  symbols.  This  evidence  that,  if  deluding 
others,  the  soothsayer  deluded  herself  also,  touched  and  affected 
the  Countess ;  and  while  she  was  still  busy  in  chafing  the  tem- 
ples of  Lucilla,  the  Moor,  brought  to  the  spot  by  that  sudden 
shriek,  entered  the  apartment.  She  seemed  surprised  and  terri- 
fied at  her  mistress's  condition,  and  poured  forth,  in  some  tongue 
unknown  to  Constance,  what  seemed  to  her  a  volley  of  mingled 
reproach  and  lamentation.  She  seized  Lady  Erpingham's  hand, 
dashed  it  indignantly  away,  and,  supporting  herself  the  ashen 


GODOLPHIN.  249 

cheek  of  Lucilla,  motioned  to  Lady  Erpingham  to  depart;  but 
Constance,  not  easily  accustomed  to  obey,  retained  her  position 
beside  the  still  insensible  Lucilla;  and  now,  by  slow  degrees, 
and  with  quick  and  heavy  sighs.,  the  unfortunate  daughter  of 
Volktman  returned  to  life  and  consciousness. 

In  assisting  Lucilla,  the  Countess  had  thrown  aside  her  veil, 
and  the  eyes  of  the  soothsayer  opened  upon  that  superb  beauty, 
which  once  to  see  was  never  to  forget.  Involuntarily  she  again 
closed  her  eyes,  and  groaned  audibly ;  and  then,  summoning  all 
her  courage,  she  withdrew  her  hand  from  Constance's  clasp,  and 
bade  her  Moorish  handmaid  leave  them  once  more  alone. 

"So,  then,"  said  Lucilla,  after  a  pause,  "  it  is  Percy  Godol- 
phin's  wife — his  English  wife — who  has  come  to  gaze  on  the 
fallen,  the  degraded  Lucilla;  and  yet,"  sinking  her  voice  into  a 
tone  of  ineffable  and  plaintive  sweetness — "  yet  I  have  slept  on 
his  bosom,  and  been  dear  and  sacred  to  him  as  thou  !  Go, 
proud  lady  go  !  Leave  me  to  my  mad,  and  sunken,  and  solitary 
state.  Go  !  " 

"Dear  Lucilla!  "  said  Constance,  kindly,  and  striving  once 
more  to  take  her  hand,  "  do  not  cast  me  away  from  you.  I  have 
long  sympathized  with  your  generous,  although  erring,  heart — 
your  hard  and  bitter  misfortunes.  Look  on  me  only  as  your 
friend — nay,  your  sister,  if  you  will.  Let  me  persuade  you  to 
leave  this  strange  and  desultory  life;  choose  your  own  home  :  I 
am  rich  to  overflowing ;  all  you  can  desire  shall  be  at  your  com- 
mand. He  shall  not  know  more  of  you,  unless  (to  assuage  the 
remorse  that  the  memory  of  you  does,  I  know,  still  occasion  him) 
you  will  suffer  him  to  learn,  from  your  own  hand,  that  you  are 
well  and  at  ease,  and  that  you  do  not  revoke  your  former  pardon. 
Come,  dear  Lucilla  !  "  and  the  arm  of  the  generous  and  bright- 
souled  Constance  gently  wound  round  the  feeble  frame  of  Lucilla, 
who  now,  reclining  back,  wept  as  if  her  heart  would  break. 
"Come,  give  me  the  deep,  the  grateful  joy  of  thinking  I  can 
minister  to  your  future  comforts.  I  was  the  cause  of  all  your 
wretchedness ;  but  for  me,  Godolphin  would  have  been  yours  for- 
ever— would  probably  by  marriage  have  redressed  your  wrongs ; 
but  for  me  you  would  not  have  wandered  an  outcast  over  the 
inhospitable  world.  Let  me  in  something  repair  what  I  have 
cost  you.  Speak  to  me,  Lucilla  !  " 

"Yes,  I  will  speak  to  you,"  said  poor  Lucilla,  throwing  herself 
on  the  ground,  and  clasping  with  grateful  warmth  the  knees  of 
her  gentle  soother ;  "  for  long,  long  years — I  dare  not  think  how 
many — I  have  not  heard  the  voice  of  kindness  fall  upon  my  ear. 
Among  strange  faces  and  harsh  tongues  hath  my  lot  been  cast ; 


250  GODOLPHIN. 

and  if  I  have  wrought  out  from  the  dreams  of  my  young  hours 
the  course  of  this  life  (which  you  contemn,  but  not  justly),  it 
has  been  that  I  may  stand  alone  and  not  dependent ;  feared  and 
not  despised.  And  now  you,  you  whom  I  admire  and  envy,  and 
would  reverence  more  than  living  woman  (for  he  loves  you  and 
deems  you  worthy  of  him),  you,  lady,  speak  to  me  as  a  sister 
would  speak,  and — and — "  Here  sobs  interrupted  Lucilla's 
speech  ;  any  Constance  herself,  almost  equally  affected,  and  find 
ing  it  vain  to  attempt  to  raise  her,  knelt  by  her  side,  and  tenderly 
caressing  her,  sought  to  comfort  her,  even  while  she  wept  in 
doing  so. 

And  this  was  a  beautiful  passage  in  the  life  of  the  lofty  Con- 
stance. Never  did  she  seem  more  noble  than  when,  thus  lowly 
and  humbling  herself,  she  knelt  beside  the  poor  victim  of  her 
husband's  love,  and  whispered  to  the  diseased  and  withering 
heart  tidings  of  comfort,  charity,  home,  and  a  futurity  of  honor 
and  of  peace.  But  this  was  not  a  dream  that  could  long  lull  the 
perturbed  and  erring  brain  of  Lucilla  Volktman.  And  when  she 
recovered,  in  some  measure,  her  self-possession,  she  rose,  and 
throwing  back  the  wild  hair  from  her  throbbing  temples,  she 
said,  in  a  calm  and  mournful  voice : 

"Your  kindness  comes  too  late.  I  am  dying,  fast — fast.  All 
that  is  left  me  in  the  world  are  these  very  visions,  this  very 
power — call  it  delusion  if  you  will — from  which  you  would  tear 
me.  Nay,  look  not  so  reproachfully,  and  in  such  wonder.  Do 
you  not  know  that  men  have  in  poverty,  sickness,  and  all  outer 
despair,  clung  to  a  creative  spirit  within — a  world  peopled  with 
delusions — and  called  it  POETRY  ?  And  that  gift  has  been  more 
precious  to  them  than  all  that  wealth  and  pomp  could  bestow  ? 
So,"  continued  Lucilla,  with  fervid  and  insane  enthusiasm,  "  so 
is  this,  my  creative  spirit,  my  imaginary  world,  my  inspiration, 
what  poetry  may  be  to  others.  I  may  be  mistaken  in  the  truth 
of  my  belief.  There  are  times  when  my  brain  is  cool,  and  my 
frame  at  rest,  and  I  sit  alone  and  think  over  the  real  past — when 
I  feel  my  trust  shaken,  and  my  ardor  damped  :  but  that  thought 
does  not  console,  but  torture,  me,  and  I  hasten  to  plunge  once 
more  among  the  charms,  and  spells,  and  mighty  dreams,  that 
wrap  me  from  my  living  self.  Oh,  lady  !  bright,  and  beautiful, 
and  lofty,  as  you  are,  there  may  come  a  time  when  you  can  con- 
ceive that  even  madness  may  be  a  relief.  For,"  (and  here  the 
wandering  light  burned  brighter  in  the  enthusiast's  glowing  eyes), 
"  for,  when  the  night  is  round  us,  and  there  is  peace  on  earth, 
and  the  world's  children  sleep,  it  is  a  wild  joy  to  sit  alone  and 
vigilant,  and  forget  that  we  live  and  are  wretched.  The  stars 


GODOLPHIN.  25! 

speak  to  us  then  with  a  wondrous  and  stirring  voice ;  they  tell  us 
of  the  doom  of  men  and  the  wreck  of  empires,  and  prophesy  of 
the  far  events  which  they  taught  to  the  old  Chaldeans.  And  then 
the  Winds,  walking  to  and  fro  as  they  list,  bid  us  go  forth  with 
them  and  hear  the  songs  of  the  midnight  spirits  ;  for  you  know," 
she  whispered  with  a  smile,  putting  her  hand  upon  the  arm  of 
the  appalled  and  shrinking  Constance,  who  now  saw  how  hope- 
less was  the  ministry  she  had  undertaken,  "that  this  world  is 
given  up  to  two  tribes  of  things  that  live  and  have  a  soul  :  the 
one  bodily  and  palpable  as  we  are ;  the  other  more  glorious,  but 
invisible  to  our  dull  sight — though  I  have  seen  them — Dread 
Solemn  Shadows,  even  in  their  mirth  ;  the  night  is  their  season 
as  the  day  is  ours ;  they  march  in  the  moonbeams,  and  are  borne 
upon  the  wings  of  the  winds.  And  with  them,  and  by  their 
thoughts,  I  raise  myself  from  what  I  am  and  have  been.  Ah,  lady, 
wouldst  thou  take  this  comfort  from  me  ?" 

"  But,"  said  Constance,  gathering  courage  from  the  gentleness 
which  Lucilla's  insanity  now  wore,  and  trying  to  soothe,  not  con- 
tradict her  in  her  present  vein,  "  but  in  the  country,  Lucilla,  in 
some  quiet  and  sheltered  nook,  you  might  indulge  these  visions 
without  the  cares  and  uncertainty  that  must  now  perplex  you ; 
without  leading  this  dangerous  and  roving  life,  which  must  at 
times  expose  you  to  insult,  to  annoyance,  and  discontent  you  with 
yourself. ' ' 

"You  are  mistaken,  lady,"  said  the  astrologer,  proudly; 
"  none  know  me  who  do  not  fear.  I  am  powerful,  and  I  hug  my 
power — it  comforts  me :  without  it,  what  should  I  be  ?  An  ab- 
ject, forsaken,  miserable  woman.  No  !  that  power  I  possess — to 
shake  men's  secret  souls — even  if  it  be  a  deceit ;  even  if  I  should 
laugh  at  them,  not  pity ;  reconciles  me  to  myself  and  to  the  past. 
And  I  am  not  poor,  madame,"  as,  with  the  common  caprice  of  her 
infirmity,  an  angry  suspicion  seemed  to  cross  her;  "I  want  no 
one's  charity,  I  have  learned  to  maintain  myself.  Nay,  I  could 
be  even  wealthy  if  I  would  !  " 

"And,"  said  Constance,  seeing  that  for  the  present  she  must 
postpone  her  benevolent  intentions;  "And  he — Godolphin — 
you  forgive  him  still?  " 

At  that  name,  it  was  as  if  a  sudden  charm  had  been  whispered 
to  the  fevered  heart  of  the  poor  fanatic ;  her  head  sank  from  its 
proud  bearing  ;  a  deep,  a  soft  blush  colored  the  wan  cheek  ;  her 
arms  drooped  beside  her ;  she  trembled  violently ;  and,  after  a 
moment's  silence,  sank  again  on  her  seat  and  covered  her  face 
with  her  hands.  "Ah!"  said  she,  softly,  "that  word  brings 
me  back  to  my  young  days,  when  I  asked  no  power  but  what  love 


252  GODOLPtflN. 

gave  me  over  one  heart :  it  brings  me  back  to  the  blue  Italian 
lake,  and  the  waving  pines,  and  our  solitary  home,  and  rny  babe's 
distant  grave.  Tell  me,"  she  cried,  again  starting  up,  "  has  he 
not  spoken  of  me  lately — has  he  not  seen  me  in  his  dreams  ? 
Have  I  not  been  present  to  his  soul  when  the  frame,  torpid  and 
locked,  severed  us  no  more,  and,  in  the  still  hours,  I  charmed 
myself  to  his  gaze?  Tell  me,  has  he  not  owned  that  Lucilia 
haunted  his  pillow  ?  Tell  me ;  and  if  I  err,  my  spells  are  noth- 
ing, my  power  is  vanity,  and  I  am  the  helpless  creature  thou  wouldst 
believe  me  !  " 

Despite  her  reason  and  her  firm  sense,  Constance  half  shud- 
dered at  these  mysterious  words,  as  she  recalled  what  Percy  had 
told  her  of  his  dreams  the  preceding  evening,  and  the  emotions 
she  herself  had  witnessed  in  his  slumbers  when  she  watched  be- 
side his  bed.  She  remained  silent,  and  Lucilla  regarded  her 
countenance  with  a  sort  of  triumph. 

"My  art,  then,  is  not  so  idle  as  thou  wouldst  hold  it.  But — 
hush  ! — last  night  I  beheld  him,  not  in  spirit,  but  visibly,  face  to 
face  ;  for  I  wander  at  times  before  his  home  (his  home  was  once 
mine  ! )  and  he  saw  me,  and  was  smitten  with  fear ;  in  these  worn 
features  he  could  recognize  not  the  living  Lucilla  he  had  known. 
But  go  to  him  !  Thou,  his  wife,  his  own — go  to  him  ;  tell  him 
— no,  tell  him  not  of  me.  He  must  not  seek  me ;  we  must  not 
hold  parley  together:  for  oh,  lady,"  (and  Lucilla's  face  became 
settled  into  an  expression  so  sad,  so  unearthly  sad,  that  no  word 
can  paint,  no  heart  conceive,  its  utter  and  solemn  sorrow),"  when 
we  two  meet  again  to  commune, — to  converse  ;  when  once  more 
I  touch  that  hand ;  when  once  more  I  feel  that  beloved,  that 
balmy  breath — my  last  hour  is  at  hand,  and  danger — imminent, 
dark,  and  deadly  danger — clings  fast  to  him  !  " 

As  she  spoke,  Lucilla  closed  her  eyes,  as  if  to  shut  some  horrid 
vision  from  her  gaze ;  and  Constance  looked  fearfully  round, 
almost  expecting  some  apparition  at  hand,  Presently  Lucilla, 
moving  silently  across  the  room,  beckoned  to  the  Countess  to  fol- 
low. She  did  so  :  they  entered  another  apartment :  before  a  re- 
cess there  hung  a  black  curtain  :  Lucilla  drew  it  slowly  aside,  and 
Constance  turned  her  eyes  from  a  dazzling  light  that  broke  upon 
them ;  when  she  again  looked,  she  beheld  a  sort  of  glass  dial 
marked  with  various  quaint  hieroglyphics  and  the  figures  of 
angels,  beautifully  wrought;  but  around  the  dial,  which  was  cir- 
cular, were  ranged  many  stars,  and  the  planets,  set  in  due  order. 
These  were  lighted  from  within  by  some  chemical  process,  and 
burnt  with  a  clear  and  lustrous,  but  silver  light,  And  Constance 
observed  that  the  dial  turned  round,  and  that  the  stars  turned 


GODOLPHIN.  253 

with  it,  each  in  a  separate  motion ;  and  in  the  midst  of  the  dial 
were  the  hands  as  of  a  clock — that  moved,  but  so  slowly,  that  the 
most  patient  ga/.e  alone  could  observe  the  motion. 

While  the  wondering  Constance  regarded  this  singular  device, 
Lucilla  pointed  to  one  star  that  burned  brighter  than  the  rest ;  and 
below  it,  half-way  down  the  dial,  was  another,  a  faint  and  sickly 
orb,  that,  when  watched,  seemed  to  perform  a  much  more  rapid 
and  irregular  course  than  its  fellows, 

"The  bright  star  is  his,"  said  she  ;  " and  yon  dim  and  dying 
one  in  the  type  of  mine.  Note :  in  the  course  they  both  pursue, 
they  must  meet  at  last ;  and  when  they  meet,  the  mechanism  of 
the  whole  halts — the  work  of  the  dial  is  forever  done.  These 
hands  indicate  hourly  the  progress  made  to  that  end  ;  for  it  is  the 
mimicry  and  symbol  of  mine.  Thus  do  I  number  the  days  of  my 
fate ;  thus  do  I  know,  even  almost  to  a  second,  the  period  in 
which  I  shall  join  my  Father  that  is  in  Heaven  ! 

"  And  now,"  continued  the  maniac  (though  maniac  is  too  harsh 
and  decided  a  word  for  the  dreaming  wildness  of  Lucilla's  insan- 
ity), as,  dropping  the  curtain,  she  took  her  guest's  hand  and  con- 
ducted her  back  into  the  outer  room  ;  "  And  now,  farewell !  You 
sought  me,  and  I  feel,  only  from  kind  and  generous  motives.  We 
never  shall  meet  more.  Tell  not  your  husband  that  you  have  seen  me. 
He  will  know  soon — too  soon — of  my  existence  :  fain  would  I  spare 
him  that  pang  and,"  growing  pale  as  she  spoke,  "  \h&t  peril ;  but 
Fate  forbids  it.  What  is  writ,  is  writ :  and  who  shall  blot  God's 
sentence  from  the  stars,  which  are  his  book  ?  Farewell !  High 
thoughts  are  graved  upon  your  brow :  may  they  bless  you  ;  or, 
where  they  fail  to  bless,  may  they  console  and  support.  Fare- 
well !  I  have  not  yet  forgotten  to  be  grateful,  and  I  still  dare  to 
pray." 

Thus  saying,  Lucilla  kissed  the  hand  she  had  held,  and  turning 
hastily  away,  regained  the  room  she  had  just  left ;  and,  locking 
the  door,  left  the  stunned  and  bewildered  Countess  to  depart  from 
the  melancholy  abode.  With  faltering  steps  she  quitted  the 
chamber,  and  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  the  little  Moor  awaited 
her.  To  her  excited  fancy  there  was  something  eltricth  and  pre- 
ternatural in  the  gaze  of  the  young  African,  and  the  grin  of  her 
pearly  teeth,  as  she  opened  the  door  to  the  visitant.  Hastening 
to  her  carraige,  which  she  had  left  at  a  corner  of  the  square,  the 
Countess  rejoiced  when  she  gained  it ;  and  throwing  herself  back 
on  the  luxurious  cushions,  felt  as  exhausted  by  the  starry  and 
weird  incident  in  the  epic  of  life's  common  career,  as  if  she  had 
partaken  of  that  overpowering  inspiration  which  she  now  almost 


254  GODOLPHIN. 

incredulously  asked  herself,  as  she  looked  forth  on  the  broad  day 
and  the  busy  streets,  if  she  had  really  witnessed. 

CHAPTER  LXIV. 

LUCILLA'S  FLIGHT. — THE  PERPLEXITY  OF  LADY  ERPINGHAM. — A 
CHANGE  COMES  OVER  GODOLPHIN'S  MIND.  —HIS  CONVERSATION 
WITH  RADCLYFFE. — GENERAL  ELECTION. GODOLPHIN  BECOMES  A 

SENATOR. 

No  human  heart  ever  beat  with  more  pure  and  generous  emo- 
tions, when  freed  from  the  political  fever  that  burned  within  her 
(withering,  for  the  moment,  the  chastened  and  wholesome  im- 
pulses ot  her  nature),  than  those  which  animated  the  heart  of  the 
queenly  Constance.  She  sent  that  evening  for  the  most  celebrated 
physician  in  London — that  polished  and  courtly  man  who  seems 
born  for  the  maladies  of  the  drawing-room,  but  who,  beneath  so 
urbane  a  demeanor,  conceals  so  accurate  and  profound  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  disorders  of  his  unfortunate  race.  I  say  accurate  and 
profound  comparatively,  for  positive  knowledge  of  pathology  is 
what  no  physician  in  modern  times  and  civilized  countries  really 
possesses.  No  man  cures  us — the  highest  art  is  not  to  kill  !  Con- 
stance, then,  sent  for  this  physician,  and,  as  delicately  as  possi- 
ble, related  the  unfortunate  state  of  Lucilla,  and  the  deep  anxiety 
she  felt  for  her  mental  and  bodily  relief.  The  physician  promised 
to  call  the  next  day ;  he  did  so,  late  in  the  afternoon — Lucilla 
was  gone.  Strange,  self-willed,  mysterious,  she  came  like  a  dream, 
to  warn,  to  terrify,  and  to  depart.  They  knew  not  whither  she 
had  fled,  and  her  Moorish  handmaid  alone  attended  her. 

Constance  was  deeply  chagrined  at  this  intelligence ;  for  she 
had  already  begun  to  build  castles  in  the  air,  which  poor  Lucilla, 
with  a  frame  restored,  and  a  heart  at  ease,  and  nothing  left 
of  the  past  but  a  soft  and  holy  penitence,  should  inhabit.  The 
Countess,  however,  consoled  herself  with  the  hope  that  Luciila 
would  at  least  write  to  her,  and  mention  her  new  place  of  resi- 
dence ;  but  days  passed  and  no  letter  came. 

Constance  feU  that  her  benevolent  intentions  were  doomed  to 
be  unfulfilled.  She  was  now  greatly  perplexed  whether  or  not  to 
relate  to  Godolphin  the  interview  that  had  taken  place  between 
her  and  Lucilla.  She  knew  the  deep,  morbid,  and  painful  inter- 
est which  the  memory  of  this  wild  and  visionary  creature  created 
in  Godolphin ;  and  she  trembled  at  the  feelings  she  might  re- 
awaken by  even  a  faint  picture  of  the  condition  and  mental  infir- 
mities of  her  whose  life  he  had  so  darkly  shadowed.  She  resolv- 


GODOLPHIN.  255 

ed,  therefore,  at  all  events  for  the  present,  and  until  every  hope 
of  discovering  Lucilla  once  more  had  expired,  to  conceal  the 
meeting  that  had  occurred.  And  in  this  resolve,  she  was  strength- 
ened by  perceiving  that  Godolphin's  mind  had  become  gradually 
calmed  from  its  late  excitement,  and  that  he  had  begun  to  con- 
sider, or  at  least  appeared  to  consider,  the  apparition  of  Lucilla 
at  his  window,  as  the  mere  delusion  of  a  heated  imagination.  His 
nights  grew  once  more  tranquil,  and  freed  from  the  dark  dreams 
that  had  tormented  his  brain ;  and  even  the  cool  and  unimagi- 
native Constance  could  scarcely  divest  herself  of  the  wild  fancy 
that,  when  Lucilla  was  near,  a  secret  and  preternatural  sympathy 
between  Godolphin  and  the  reader  of  the  stars  had  produced  that 
influence  over  his  nightly  dreams  which  paled,  and  receded,  and 
vanished,  as  Lucilla  departed  from  the  actual  circle  in  which  he 
lived. 

It  was  at  this  time,  too,  that  a  change  was  perceptible  in  God- 
olphin's habits,  and  crept  gradually  over  the  character  of  his 
thoughts.  Dissipation  ceased  to  allure  him  ;  the  light  wit  of  his 
parasites  palled  upon  his  ear ;  magnificence  had  lost  its  gloss, 
and  the  same  fastidious,  exacting  thirst  for  the  ideal  which  had 
disappointed  him  in  the  better  objects  of  life,  began  now  to  dis- 
content him  with  its  glittering  pleasures. 

The  change  was  natural,  and  the  causes  not  difficult  to  fathom. 
The  fact  was,  that  Godolphin  had  now  arrived  at  that  period  of 
existence  when  a  man's  character  is  almost  invaribly  subject  to 
great  change;  the  crisis  in  life's  fever,  when  there  is  a  new  turn 
in  our  fate,  and  our  moral  death  or  regeneration  is  sealed  by  the 
silent  wavering,  or  the  solemn  decision  of  the  HOUR  !  Arrived  at 
the  confines  of  middle  age,  there  is  an  outward  innovation  in  the 
whole  system;  unlooked-for  symptoms  break  forth  in  the  bodily, 
unlooked-for  symptoms  in  the  mental,  frame.  It  happened  to 
Godolphin  that,  at  this  critical  period,  a  chance,  a  circumstance, 
a  straw,  had  reunited  his  long  interrupted,  but  never  stifled 
affections  to  the  image  of  his  beautiful  Constance.  The  reign 
of  passion,  the  magic  of  those  sweet  illusions,  that  ineffable 
yearning  which  possession  mocks,  although  it  quells  at  last,  were 
indeed  forever  over;  but  a  friendship  more  soft  and  genial  than 
exists  in  any  relation;  save  that  of  husband  and  wife,  had  sprung 
up,  almost  as  by  a  miracle  (so  sudden  was  it),  between  breasts  for 
years  divided.  And  the  experience  of  those  years  had  taught 
Godolphin  how  frail  and  unsubstantial  had  been  all  the  other  ties 
he  had  formed.  He  wondered,  as  sitting  alone  with  Constance, 
her  tenderness  recalled  the  past,  her  wit  enlivened  the  present, 
and  his  imagination  still  shed  a  glory  and  a  loveliness  over  the 


256  GODOLPHIN. 

future,  that  he  had  been  so  long  insensible  to  the  blessing  of  that 
communion  which  he  now  experienced.  He  did  not  perceive 
what  in  fact  was  the  case,  that  the  tastes  and  sympathies  of  each, 
blunted  by  that  disappointment  which  is  the  child  of  experience, 
were  more  willing  to  concede  somewhat  to  the  tastes  and  sym- 
pathies of  the  other;  that  Constance  gave  a  more  indulgent 
listening  to  his  beautiful  refinements  of  an  ideal  and  false  epicu- 
rism; that  he,  smiling  still,  smiled  with  kindness,  not  with 
scorn,  at  the  sanguine  politics,  the  worldly  schemes,  and  the 
rankling  memories  of  the  intriguing  Constance.  Fortunately, 
too,  for  her,  the  times  were  such,  that  men  who  never  before 
dreamed  of  political  interference  were  roused  and  urged  into  the 
mighty  conflux  of  battling  interests,  which  left  few  moderate  and 
none  neuter.  Every  coterie  resounded  with  political  war-cries ; 
every  dinner  rang,  from  soup  to  the  coffee,  with  the  merits  of  tke 
bill ;  wherever  Godolphin  turned  for  refuge,  Reform  still  assailed 
him;  and  by  degrees  the  universal  feeling,  that  was  at  first  ridi- 
culed, was  at  last,  although  reluctantly,  admitted  by  his  mind. 

"Why,"  said  he,  one  day,  musingly,  to  Radclyffe,  whom  he 
met  in  the  old  Green  Park  (for  since  the  conversation  recorded 
between  Radclyffe  and  Constance,  the  former  came  little  to 
Erpingham  House)  "Why  should  I  not  try  a  yet  ?/«tried  experi- 
ment? Why  should  I  not  live  like  others  in  their  graver  as  in  their 
lighter  pursuits?  I  confess,  when  I  look  back  to  the  years  I  have 
spent  in  England,  I  feel  that  I  calculated  erroneously.  I 
chalked  out  a  plan — I  have  followed  it  rigidly.  I  have  lived  for 
self,  for  pleasure,  for  luxury;  I  have  summoned  wit,  beauty,  even 
wisdom  around  me.  I  have  been  the  creator  of  a  magic  circle, 
but  to  the  magician  himself  the  magic  was  tame  and  ignoble.  In 
short,  I  have  dreamed,  and  am  awake.  Yet,  what  course  of  life 
should  supply  this,  which  I  think  of  deserting  ?  Shall  I  go  once 
more  abroad,  and  penetrate  some  untravelled  corner  of  the 
earth  ?  Shall  I  retire  into  the  country,  and  write,  draining  my 
mind  of  the  excitement  that  presses  on  it ;  or  lastly,  shall  I 
plunge  with  my  contemporaries  into  the  great  gulf  of  actual 
events,  and  strive,  and  fret,  and  struggle  ? — or — in  short,  Rad- 
clyffe, you  are  a  wise  man  ;  advise  me  !  " 

"  Alas  !  "  answered  Radclyffe,  "  it  is  of  no  use  advising  one  to 
be  happy  who  has  no  object  beyond  himself.  Either  enthusiasm, 
or  utter  mechanical  coldness,  is  necessary  to  reconcile  men  to  the 
cares  and  mortifications  of  life.  You  must  feel  nothing,  or  you 
must  feel  for  others.  Unite  yourself  to  a  great  object ;  see  its 
goal  distinctly ;  cling  to  its  course  courageously ;  hope  for  its 
triumph  sanguinely ;  and  on  its  majestic  progress  you  sail,  as  in 


GODOLPHIN.        .  25  7 

a  ship,  agitated  indeed  by  the  storms,  but  unheeding  the  breeze 
and  the  surge  that  would  appal  the  individual  effort.  The  larger 
public  objects  make  us  glide  smoothly  and  unfelt  over  our  minor 
private  griefs.  To  be  happy,  my  dear  Godolphin,  you  must  for- 
get yourself.  Your  refining  and  poetical  temperament  preys  upon 
your  content.  Learn  benevolence — it  is  the  only  cure  to  a  mor- 
bid nature." 

Godolphin  was  greatly  struck  by  this  answer  of  Radclyffe ;  the 
more  so,  as  he  had  a  deep  faith  in  the  unaffected  sincerity  and 
the  calculating  wisdom  of  his  adviser.  He  looked  hard  in  Rad- 
clyffe's  face,  and,  after  a  pause  of  some  moments,  replied, 
slowly,  "  I  believe  you  are  right  after  all ;  and  I  have  learned,  in 
a  few  short  sentences,  the  secret  of  a  discontented  life." 

Godolphin  would  have  sought  other  opportunities  of  convers- 
ing with  Radclyffe,  but  events  soon  parted  them.  Parliament 
was  dissolved  !  What  an  historical  event  is  recorded  in  those 
words !  The  moment  the  King  consented  to  that  measure,  the 
whole  series  of  subsequent  events  became,  to  an  ordinary  pre- 
science, clear  as  in  a  mirror.  Parliament  dissolved  in  the  heat  of 
the  popular  enthusiasm,  a  majority,  a  great  majority  of  Reform- 
ers was  sure  to  be  returned. 

Constance  perceived  at  a  glance  the  whole  train  of  consequences 
issuing  from  that  one  event ;  perceived  and  exulted.  A  glory 
had  gone  forever  from  the  party  she  abhorred.  Her  father  was 
already  avenged.  She  heard  his  scornful  laugh  ring  forth  from 
the  depths  of  his  forgotten  grave  ! 

London  emptied  itself  at  once.  England  was  one  election. 
Godolphin  remained  almost  alone.  For  the  first  time  a  sense  of 
littleness  crept  over  him ;  a  feeling  of  insignificance,  which 
wounded  and  galled  his  vain  nature.  In  these  great  struggles  he 
was  nothing.  The  admired — the  cultivated — spirituel — the 
splendid  Godolphin,  sank  below  the  commonest  adventurer,  the 
coarsest  brawler — yea,  the  humblest  freeman,  who  felt  his  stake 
in  the  State,  joined  the  canvass,  swelled  the  cry,  and  helped  in 
the  mighty  battle  between  old  things  and  new,  which  was  so  reso- 
lutely begun.  This  feeling  gave  an  impetus  to  the  growth  of  the 
new  aspirations  he  had  already  suffered  his  mind  to  generate; 
and  Constance  marked,  with  vivid  delight,  that  he  now  listened 
to  her  plans  with  interest,  and  examined  the  political  field  with 
a  curious  and  searching  gaze. 

But  she  was  soon  condemned  to  a  disappointment  propor- 
tioned to  her  delight.  Though  Godolphin  had  hitherto  taken  no 
interest  in  party  politics,  his  prejudices,  his  feelings,  his  habits  of 
mind,  were  all  the  reverse  of  democratic.  When  he  once  began  to 


258  •       GODOLPHIN. 

examine  the  bearings  of  the  momentous  question  that  agitated 
England,  he  was  not  slow  in  coming  to  conclusions  which 
threatened  to  produce  a  permanent  disagreement  between  Con- 
stance and  himself. 

"  You  wish  me  to  enter  Parliament,  my  dear  Constance,"  said 
he,  with  his  quiet  smile;  "  it  would  be  an  experiment  dangerous  to 
the  union  re-established  between  us.  I  should  vote  against  your 
Bill." 

"You!"  exclaimed  Constance,  with  warmth;  "Is  it  possible 
that  you  can  sympathize  with  the  fears  of  a  selfish  oligarchy — with 
the  cause  of  the  merchants  and  traffickers  of  the  plainest  right  of 
a  free  people — the  right  to  select  their  representatives?" 

"  My  dear  Constance,"  returned  Godolphin,  "my  whole  theory 
of  government  is  aristocratic.  The  right  of  the  people  to  choose 
representatives !  You  may  as  well  say  the  right  of  the  people  to 
choose  kings,  or  magistrates,  and  judges — or  clergymen  and  arch- 
bishops !  The  people  have,  it  is  true,  the  abstract  and  original 
right  to  choose  all  these,  and  every  year  to  chop  and  change  them 
as  they  please,  but  the  people,  very  properly,  in  all  States,  mort- 
gage their  elementary  rights  for  one  catholic  and  practical  right 
— the  right  to  be  well  governed.  It  may  be  no  more  to  the  advan- 
tage of  the  state  that  the  people  (that  is,  the  majority,  the  popu- 
lace) should  elect  uncontrolled  all  the  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons,  than  that  they  should  elect  all  the  pastors  of  their 
religion.  The  sole  thing  we  have  to  consider  is,  will  they  be  the 
better  governed  ?  ' ' 

"Unquestionably,"  said  Constance. 

"Unquestionably  !  Well,  /question  it.  I  foresee  a  more  even 
balance  of  parties — nothing  else.  When  parties  are  evenly  bal- 
anced— States  tremble.  In  good  government  there  should  be 
somewhere  sufficient  power  to  carry  on,  not  unexamined,  but  at 
least  with  vigor,  the  different  operations  of  government  itself.  In 
free  countries,  therefore,  one  party  ought  to  preponderate  suffi- 
ciently over  the  other.  If  it  do  not,  all  the  State  measures  are 
crippled,  delayed,  distorted,  and  the  State  languishes  while  the 
doctors  dispute  as  to  the  medicines  to  be  applied  to  it.  You  will 
find  by  your  Bill,  not  that  the  Tories  are  destroyed,  but  that  the 
Whigs  and  the  Radicals  are  strengthened  ;  the  Lords  are  not 
crushed,  but  the  Commons  are  in  a  state  to  contest  with  them. 
Hence  party  battles  upon  catchwords — struggles  between  the  two 
chambers  for  things  of  straw.  You  who  desire  progress  and 
movement  will  find  real  affairs  of  this  great  Artificial  Empire,  in 
its  trade — commerce — colonies — internal  legislation — standing 
still  while  the  Whigs  and  the  Tories  pelt  each  other  with  the 


GODOLPHIN.  259 

quibbles  of  faction.  No — I  should  vote  against  your  Bill !  I  am 
not  for  popular  governments,  though  I  \ikefree  States.  All  the 
advantages  of  democracy  seem  to  me  more  than  counterbalanced 
by  the  sacrifice  of  the  peace  and  tranquility,  the  comfort  and  the 
grace,  the  dignity  and  the  charities  of  life  that  democracies  usu- 
ally entail.  If  the  object  of  men  is  to  live  happily — not  to  strive 
and  to  fret ;  not  to  make  money  in  the  market-place,  and  call 
each  other  rogues  on  the  hustings — who  would  not  rather  be  a 
German  than  an  American  ?  I  own  I  regret  to  differ  with  you. 
For — but  no  matter — " 

"  For  !     What  were  you  about  to  say  ?  " 

"  For,  then,  since  you  must  know  it,  I  am  beginning  to  feel 
interest  in  these  questions — excitement  is  contagious.  And,  after 
all,  if  a  man  really  deem  his  mother-country  in  some  danger, 
inaction  is  not  philosophy,  but  a  species  of  parricide.  But  to 
think  of  the  daily  and  hourly  pain  I  should  occasion  to  you,  my 
beloved  and  ardent  Constance,  by  shocking  all  your  opinions, 
counteracting  all  your  schemes,  working  against  objects  which 
your  father's  fate  and  your  early  associations  have  so  singularly 
made  duties  in  your  eyes — to  do  all  this  is  a  patriotism  beyond 
me.  Let  us  glide  out  of  this  whirlpool,  and  hoist  sail  for  some 
nook  in  the  country  where  we  can  hear  gentler  sounds  than  the 
roar  of  the  democracy." 

Constance  sighed,  and  suffered  Godolphin  to  quit  her  in  silence. 
But  her  generous  heart  was  touched  by  his  own  generosity.  This 
is  one  of  the  great  curses  of  a  woman  who  aspires  to  the  man's 
part  of  political  controversy.  If  the  man  chooses  to  act,  the 
woman,  with  all  her  wiles,  her  intrigues,  her  arts,  is  powerless. 
If  Godolphin  were  to  enter  Parliament  a  Tory,  the  great  Whig 
rendezvous  of  Erpingham  House  was  lost,  and  Constance  herself 
a  cipher — and  her  father's  wrongs  forgotten,  and  the  stern  pur- 
pose of  her  masculine  career  baffled  at  the  very  moment  of  suc- 
cess. She  now  repented  that  she  had  ever  desired  to  draw  Godol- 
phin's  attention  to  political  matters.  She  wondered  at  her  own 
want  of  foresight.  How,  with  his  love  for  antiquity,  his  predilec- 
tions for  the  elegant  and  the  serene,  his  philosophy  of  the  "  Rose- 
garden,"  could  she  ever  have  supposed  that  he  would  side  with 
the  bold  objects  and  turbulent  will  of  a  popular  party  in  a  stormy 
crisis ! 

The  subject  was  not  renewed.  But  she  had  the  pain  of  observ- 
ing that  Godolphin's  manner  was  altered ;  he  took  pleasure  in 
none  of  his  old  hobbies — he  was  evidently  dissatisfied  with  him- 
self. In  fact,  it  is  true  that  he,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  felt 
that  there  is  a  remorse  to  the  mind  as  well  as  to  the  soul,  and  that 


260  GODOLPH1N. 

a  man  of  genius  cannot  be  perpetually  idle  without,  as  he  touches 
on  the  middle  of  his  career,  looking  to  the  past  with  some  shame, 
and  to  the  future  with  some  ambition.  One  evening,  when  he 
had  sat  by  the  open  window  in  a  thoughtful  and  melancholy, 
almost  morose,  silence  for  a  considerable  time,  Constance,  after 
a  violent  struggle  with  herself,  rose  suddenly,  and  fell  on  his 
neck: 

"Forgive  me,  Percy,"  she  said,  unable  to  suppress  her  tears: 
"  forgive  me — it  is  past — I  have  no  right  that  you,  so  superior  to 
myself,  should  be  sacrificed  to  my — my  prejudices  you  would  call 
them — so  be  it.  Is  it  for  your  wife  to  condemn  you  to  be  inglori- 
ous ?  No — no,  dear  Godolphin ;  fulfil  your  destiny — you  are  born 
for  high  objects.  Be  active,  be  distinguished,  and  I  will  ask  no 
more  ! ' ' 

John  Vernon,  in  that  hour  you  were  forgotten.  Who  among 
the  dead  can  ever  hope  for  fidelity  when  love  to  the  living  invites 
a  Woman  to  betray  ! 

"My  sweet  Constance,"  said  Godolphin,  drawing  her  to  his 
heart,  and  affected  in  proportion  as  he  appreciated  all  that  in  that 
speech  his  wife  gave  up  for  his  sake — the  all,  far  more  than  the 
lovely  person,  the  splendid  wealth,  the  lofty  rank  that  she  had 
brought  to  his  home ;  ' '  My  sweet  Constance,  do  not  think  I  will 
take  advantage  of  words  so  generously,  but  hastily  spoken.  Time 
enough  hereafter  to  think  of  differences  between  us.  At  present 
let  us  indulge  only  the  luxury  of  the  new  love — the  holiness  of  the 
new  nuptials — that  have  made  us  as  one  Being.  Perhaps  this 
restlessness,  so  unusual  to  me,  will  pass  away — let  us  wait  awhile. 
At  present 'Sparta  has  many  a  worthier  son.'  One  other  year, 
one  sweet  summer,  of  the  private  life  we  have  too  much  suffered 
to  glide  away,  enjoyed,  and  then  we  will  see  whether  the  harsh 
realities  of  Ambition  be  worth  either  a  concession  or  a  dispute. 
Let  us  go  into  the  country — to-morrow  if  you  will." 

And  as  Constance  was  about  to  answer,  he  sealed  her  lips  with 
his  kiss. 

But  Lady  Erpingham  was  not  one  of  those  who  waver  in  what 
they  deem  a  duty.  She  passed  the  night  in  stern  and  sleepless 
commune  with  herself;  she  was  aware  of  all  that  she  hazarded — 
all  that  she  renounced  :  she  was  even  tortured  by  scruples  as  to 
the  strange  oath  that  had  almost  unsexed  her.  Still,  in  spite  of 
all,  she  felt  that  nothing  would  excuse  her  in  suffering  that  gifted 
and  happy  intellect,  now  awakened  from  the  sleep  of  the  Syba- 
rite, to  fall  back  into  its  lazy  and  effeminate  repose.  She  had  no 
right  to  doom  a  human  soul  to  rot  away  in  its  clay.  Perhaps, 
too,  she  hoped,  as  all  polemical  enthusiasts  do,  that  Godolphin, 


GODOLPHIN.  26l 

once  aroused,  would  soon  become  her  convert.  Be  that  as  it  may, 
she  delayed,  on  various  pretences,  their  departure  from  London. 
She  went  secretly  the  next  day  to  one  of  the  proprietors  of  the 
close  boroughs,  the  existence  of  which  was  about  to  be  annihil- 
ated, and  a  few  days  afterwards  Godolphin  received  a  letter  in- 
forming him  that  he  had  been  duly  elected  member  for .  I 

will  not  say  what  were  his  feelings  at  these  tidings.  Perhaps,  such 
is  man's  proud  and  wayward  heart,  he  felt  shame  to  be  so  out- 
done by  Constance. 

CHAPTER  LXV. 

NEW     VIEWS     OF     A     PRIVILEGED     ORDER. — THE     DEATH-BED      OF 
AUGUSTUS  SAVILLE. 

THIS  event  might  indeed  have  been  an  era  in  the  life  of  Percy 
Godolphin,  had  that  life  been  spared  to  a  more  extended  limit  than 
it  was ;  and  yet,  so  long  had  his  ambition  been  smoothed  and 
polished  away  by  his  peculiarities  of  thought,  and  so  little  was 
his  calm  and  indifferent  tone  of  mind  suited  to  the  hot  contests 
and  nightly  warfare  of  parliamentary  politics,  that  it  is  not  prob- 
able he  would  ever  have  won  a  continuous  and  solid  distinction  in 
a  career  which  requires  either  obtuseness  of  mind  or  enthusiasm 
of  purpose  to  encounter  the  repeated  mortifications  and  failures 
which  the  most  brilliant  debutant  ordinarily  endures.  As  it  was, 
however,  it  produced  a  grave  and  solemn  train  of  thought  in 
Godolphin's  breast.  He  mused  much  over  his  past  life,  and  the 
musing  did  not  satisfy  him.  He  felt  like  one  of  those  recorded 
in  physiological  history  who  have  been  in  a  trance  for  years ;  and 
now  slowly  awakening,  he  acknowledged  the  stir  and  rush  of  re- 
vived but  confused  emotions.  Nature,  perhaps,  had  intended 
Godolphin  for  a  poet ;  for,  with  the  exception  of  the  love  of 
glory,  the  poetical  characteristics  were  rife  within  him  ;  and  over 
his  whole  past  existence  the  dimness  of  unexpressed  poetical  sen- 
sation had  clung  and  hovered.  It  was  this  which  had  deadened 
his  soul  to  the  active  world,  and  wrapped  him  in  the  land  of 
dreams;  it  was  this  which  had  induced  that  vague  and  restless 
disatisfaction  with  the  Actual  which  had  brought  the  thirst  for 
the  Ideal ;  it  was  this  which  had  made  him  fastidious  in  love,  re- 
pining in  pleasure,  magnificent  in  luxury,  seeking  and  despising 
all  things  in  the  same  breath.  There  are  many,  perhaps,  of  this 
sort,  who,  having  the  poet's  nature,  have  never  found  the  poet's 
vent  to  his  emotions ;  have  wandered  over  the  visionary  world 
without  chancing  to  discover  the  magic  wand  that  was  stored 


262  GODOLPHIN. 

within  the  dark  chamber  of  their  mind,  and  would  have  reduced 
the  visions  into  shape  and  substance.  Alas  !  What  existence  can 
be  more  unfulfilled  than  that  of  one  who  has  the  soul  of  the  poet 
and  not  the  skill  ?  who  has  the  subsceptibility  and  the  craving, 
not  the  consolation  or  the  reward  ? 

But  if  this  cloud  of  dreamlike  emotion  had  so  long  hung  ove> 
Godolphin,  it  began  now  to  melt  away  from  his  heart ;  a  clearer 
and  distincter  view  of  the  large  objects  of  life  lay  before  him  ; 
and  he  felt  that  he  was  standing,  half  stunned  and  passive,  in  the 
great  crisis  of  his  fate. 

The  day  was  now  fixed  for  their  departure  to  Wendover,  when 
Saville  was  taken  alarmingly  ill ;  Godolphin  was  sent  for  late  one 
evening.  He  found  the  soi-disant  Epicurean  at  the  point  of 
death,  but  in  perfect  possession  of  his  senses.  The  scene  around 
him  was  emblematic  of  his  life:  save  Godolphin,  not  a  friend 
was  by.  Saville  had  some  dozen  or  two  of  natural  children — 
where  were  they  ?  He  had  abandoned  them  to  their  fate :  he 
knew  not  of  their  existence,  nor  they  of  his  death.  Lonely  in 
his  selfishness  was  he  left  to  breath  out  the  small  soul  of  a  man  of 
ton-ton  !  But  I  must  do  Saville  the  justice  to  say,  that  if  he  was 
without  the  mourners  and  the  attendants  that  belong  to  natural 
ties,  he  did  not  require  them.  His  was  no  whimpering  exit  from 
life :  the  champagne  was  drained  to  the  last  drop ;  and  Death, 
like  the  true  boon  companion,  was  about  to  shatter  the  empty 
glass. 

"  Well,  my  friend,"  said  Saville,  feebly,  but  pressing  with 
weak  fingers  Godolphin's  hand;  "well,  the  game  is  up,  the 
lights  are  going  out,  and  presently  the  last  guest  will  depart,  and 
all  be  darkness!  "  Here  the  doctor  came  to  the  bedside  with  a 
cordial.  The  dying  man,  before  he  took  it,  fixed  upon  the  leech 
an  eye  which,  although  fast  glazing,  still  retained  something  of 
its  keen,  searching  shrewdness. 

"Now,  tell  me,  my  good  sir,  how  many  hours  more  can  you 
keep  in  this — this  breath  ?  " 

The  doctor  looked  at  Godolphin. 

"I  understand  you,"  said  Saville;  "you  are  shy  on  these 
points.  Never  be  shy,  my  good  fellow ;  it  is  inexcusable  after 
twenty :  besides,  it  is  a  bad  compliment  to  my  nerves — a  gentle- 
man is  prepared  for  every  event.  Sir,  it  is  only  a  roturier  whom 
death,  or  anything  else,  takes  by  surprise.  How  many  hours, 
then,  can  I  live?" 

"  Not  many,  I  fear,  sir :  perhaps  until  daybreak." 

"  My  day  breaks  about  twelve  o'clock,  P.  M.,"  said  Saville,  as 
dryly  as  his  gasps  would  let  him.  "Very  well:  give  me  the 


GODOLPHIN.  263 

cordial ;  don't  let  me  go  to  sleep — I  don'i  want  to  be  cheated  out 
of  a  minute.  So,  so  !  I  am  better.  You  may  withdraw,  doctor. 
Let  my  spaniel  come  up.  Bustle,  Bustle  ! — poor  fellow  !  poor 
fellow  !  Lie  down,  sir  !  be  quiet !  And  now,  Godolphin,  a  few 
words  in  farewell.  I  always  liked  you  greatly  ;  you  know  you 
were  my  protege,  and  you  have  turned  out  well.  You  have  not 
been  led  away  by  the  vulgar  passion  of  politics,  and  place,  and 
power.  You  have  had  power  over  power  itself;  you  have  not 
office,  but  you  have  fashion.  You  have  made  the  greatest  match 
in  England;  very  prudently  not  marrying  Constance  Vernon,  very 
prudently  marrying  Lady  Erpingham.  You  are  at  the  head  and 
front  of  society ;  you  have  excellent  taste,  and  spend  your  wealth 
properly.  All  this  must  make  your  conscience  clear — a  won- 
derful consolation  !  Always  keep  a  sound  conscience ;  it  is  a 
great  blessing  on  one's  death-bed — it  is  a  great  blessing  to  me 
in  this  hour,  for  I  have  played  my  part  decently — eh  ?  I  have 
enjoyed  life,  as  much  as  so  dull  a  possession  can  be  enjoyed ;  I  have 
loved,  gamed,  drunk,  but  I  have  never  lost  my  character  as  a  gen- 
tleman :  thank  Heaven,  I  have  no  remorse  of  that  sort !  Follow  my 
example  to  the  last  and  you  will  die  as  easily.  I  have  left  you  my 
correspondence  and  my  journal :  you  may  publish  them  if  you  like ; 
if  not,  burn  them.  They  are  full  of  amusing  anecdotes ;  but  I  don't 
care  for  fame,  as  you  well  know — especially  posthumous  fame.  Do 
as  you  please,  then,  with  my  literary  remains.  Take  care  of  my  dog 
— 'tis  a  good  creature;  and  let  me  be  quietly  buried.  No  bad 
taste — no  ostentation — no  epitaph.  I  am  very  glad  I  die  before  the 
d — d  Revolution  that  must  come ;  I  don't  want  to  take  wine  with 
the  Member  for  Holborn  Bars.  I  am  a  type  of  a  system ;  I  expire 
before  the  system  :  my  death  is  the  herald  of  its  fall." 

With  these  expressions — not  continuously  uttered,  but  at  short 
intervals — Saville  turned  away  his  face  :  his  breathing  became 
thick :  he  fell  into  the  slumber  he  had  deprecated ;  and,  after 
about  an  hour's  silence,  died  away  as  insensibly  as  an  infant.  Sic 
transit  gloria  mundi  / 

The  first  living  countenance  beside  the  death-bed  on  which 
Godolphin's  eye  fell  was  that  of  Fanny  Millinger;  she  (who  had 
been  much  with  Saville  during  his  latter  days,  for  her  talk  amused 
him,  and  her  good-nature  made  her  willing  to  amuse  any  one) 
had  been,  at  his  request,  summoned  also  with  Godolphin  at  the 
sudden  turn  of  his  disease.  She  was  at"  the  theatre  at  the  time, 
and  had  only  just  arrived  when  the  deceased  had  fallen  into  his 
last  sleep.  There,  silent  and  shocked,  she  stood  by  the  bed, 
opposite  Godolphin.  She  had  not  stayed  to  change  her  stage- 
dress  ;  and  the  tinsel  and  mock  jewels  glittered  on  the  revolted 


264  GODOLPHIN. 

eye  of  her  quondam  lover.  What  a  type  of  the  life  just  extin- 
guished !  What  a  satire  on  its  mountebank  artificialties  ! 

Some  little  time  after  she  joined  Godolphin  in  the  desolate 
apartment  below.  She  put  her  hand  in  his,  and  her  tears — for 
she  wept  easily — flowed  fast  down  her  cheeks,  washing  away  the 
lavish  rouge  which  imperfectly  masked  the  wrinkles  that  Time  had 
lately  begun  to  sow  on  a  surface  Godolphin  had  remembered  so 
fair  and  smooth. 

"Poor  Saville  !  "  said  she,  falteringly ;  "he  died  without  a 
pang.  Ah  !  he  had  the  best  temper  possible." 

Godolphin  sat  by  the  writing-table  of  the  deceased,  shading 
his  brow  with  the  hand  which  the  actress  left  disengaged. 

"  Fanny,"  said  he,  bitterly,  after  a  pause,  "  the  world  is  indeed 
a  stage.  It  has  lost  a  consummate  actor,  though  in  a  small  part." 

The  saying  was  wrung  from  Godolphin — and  was  not  said 
unkindly,  though  it  seemed  so — for  he  too  had  tears  in  his  eyes. 

"  Ah,"  said  she,  "the  play-house  has  indeed  taught  us,  in  our 
youth,  many  things  which  the  real  world  could  not  teach  us 
better." 

"Life  differs  from  the  play  only  in  this,"  said  Godolphin, 
some  time  afterwards;  "  it  has  no  plot — all  is  vague,  desultory, 
unconnected — till  the  curtain  drops  with  the  mystery  unsolved." 

Those  were  the  last  words  that  Godolphin  ever  addressed  to  the 
actress. 

CHAPTER  LXVI. 

THE  JOURNEY  AND  THE  SURPRISE. — A  WALK  IN  THE  SUMMER 
NIGHT. — THE  STARS  AND  THE  ASSOCIATION  THAT  MEMORY  MAKES 
WITH  NATURE. 

THIS  event  detained  Godolphin  some  days  longer  in  town.  He 
saw  the  last  rites  performed  to  Saville,  and  he  was  present  at  the 
opening  of  the  will. 

As  in  life  Saville  had  never  lent  a  helping  hand  to  the  dis- 
tressed ;  as  he  had  mixed  with  the  wealthy  only ;  so  now  to  the 
wealthy  only  was  his  wealth  devoted.  The  rich  Gcdolphin  was 
his  principal  heir ;  not  a  word  was  even  said  about  his  illegitimate 
children  ;  not  an  inquiry  ordained  towards  his  poor  relations.  In 
this,  as  in  all  the  formula  of  his  will,  Saville  followed  the  pre- 
scribed customs  of  the  world. 

Fast  went  the  panting  steeds  that  bore  Constance  and  Godol- 
phin from  the  desolate  city.  Bright  was  the  summer  sky,  and 
green  looked  the  smiling  fields  that  lay  on  either  side  their  road., 


GODOLPHIN.  265 

Nature  was  awake  and  active.  What  a  delicious  contrast  to  the 
scenes  of  Art  which  they  left  behind  !  Constance  exerted  herself 
to  the  utmost  to  cheer  the  spirits  of  her  companion,  and  suc- 
ceeded. In  the  small  compass  which  confined  them  together, 
their  conversation  flowed  in  confidence  and  intimate  affection, 
Not  since  the  first  month  of  their  union  had  they  talked  with  less 
reserve  and  more  entire  love — only  there  was  this  difference  in 
their  topics  ;  they  then  talked  of  the  future  only,  they  now  talked 
more  of  the  past.  They  uttered  many  a  fond  regret  over  their 
several  faults  to  each  other ;  and,  with  clasped  hands,  congratu- 
lated themselves  on  their  present  reunion  of  heart.  They  allowed 
how  much  all  things  independent  of  affection  had  deceived  them, 
and  no  longer  exacting  so  much  from  love,  they  felt  its  real 
importance.  Ah,  why  do  all  of  us  lose  so  many  years  in  search- 
ing after  happiness,  but  never  inquiring  into  its  nature  !  We  are 
like  one  who  collects  the  books  of  a  thousand  tongues,  and  know- 
ing not  their  language,  wonders  why  they  do  not  delight  him  ! 

But  still  athwart  the  mind  of  Constance  one  dark  image  would 
ever  and  anon  obtrude  itself;  the  solitary  and  mystic  Lucilla, 
with  her  erring  brain  and  forlorn  fortunes,  was  not  even  in  hap- 
piness to  be  forgotten.  There  were  times,  too,  in  that  short  jour- 
ney, when  she  felt  the  tale  of  her  interview  with  that  unhappy 
being  rise  to  her  lips ;  but  even  when  she  looked  on  the  counte- 
nance of  Godolphin,  beaming  with  more  heartfelt  and  homeborn 
gladness  than  she  had  seen  for  years,  she  could  not  bear  the 
thought  of  seeing  it  darkened  by  the  pain  her  story  would  inflict ; 
and  she  shrank  from  embittering  moments  so  precious  to  her  heart. 

All  her  endeavors  to  discover  Lucilla  had  been  in  vain  ;  but  an 
unquiet  presentiment  that  at  any  moment  that  discovery  might  be 
made,  perhaps  in  the  presence  of  Godolphin,  constantly  haunted 
her,  and  she  even  now  looked  painfully  forth  at  each  inn  where 
they  changed  horses,  lest  the  sad,  stern  features  of  the  soothsayer 
should  appear,  and  break  that  spell  of  happy  quiet  which  now 
lay  over  the  spirit  of  Godolphin.  It  was  towards  the  evening 
that  their  carriage  slowly  wound  up  a  steep  and  long  ascent.  The 
sun  yet  wanted  an  hour  to  its  setting  ;  and  at  their  right,  its  slant 
and  mellowed  beams  fell  over  rich  fields,  green  with  the  prodigal 
luxuriance  of  June,  and  intersected  by  hedges  from  which,  proud 
and  frequent,  the  oak  and  elm  threw  forth  their  lengthened  shad- 
ows. On  their  left,  the  grass  less  fertile,  and  the  spaces  less 
enclosed,  were  whitened  with  flocks  of  sheep ;  and  far  and  soft 
came  the  bleating  of  the  lambs  upon  their  ear.  They  saw  not  the 
shepherd  nor  any  living  form  ;  but  from  between  the  thicker 
groups  of  trees,  the  chimneys  of  peaceful  cottages  peered  forth, 


266  GODOLPHIN. 

and  gave  to  the  pastoral  serenity  of  the  scene  that  still  and  tran- 
quil aspect  of  life  which  alone  suited  it.  The  busy  wheel  in  the 
heart  of  Constance  was  at  rest,  and  Godolphin's  soul,  steeped  in 
the  luxury  of  the  present  hour,  felt  that  delicious  happiness  which 
would  be  Heaven  could  it  outlive  the  hour. 

"  My  Constance,"  whispered  he,  "  why,  since  we  return  at 
last  to  these  scenes,  why  should  we  ever  leave  them  ?  Amidst 
them  let  us  recall  our  youth  !  "  Constance  sighed,  but  with 
pleasure,  and  pressed  Godolphin's  hand  to  her  lips. 

And  now  they  had  gained  the  hill ;  a  sudden  color  flushed  over 
Godolphin's  cheek. 

"  Surely,"  said  he,  "  I  remember  this  view.  Yonder  valley! 
This  is  not  the  road  to  Wendover  Castle ;  this — my  father's  home ! 
— the  same,  and  not  the  same  ! ' ' 

Yes  !  Below,  basking  in  the  western  light,  lay  the  cottage  in 
which  Godolphin's  childhood  had  been  passed.  There  was  the 
stream  rippling  merrily  ;  there  the  broken  and  fern-clad  turf  with 
"  its  old  hereditary  trees";  but  the  ruins  !  The  shattered  arch, 
the  mouldering  tower,  were  left  indeed,  but  new  arches,  new  tur- 
rets had  arisen,  and  so  dexterously  blended  with  the  whole  that 
Godolphin  might  have  fancied  the  hall  of  his  forefathers  restored 
— not  indeed  in  the  same  vast  proportions  and  cumbrous  grandeur 
as  of  old,  but  still  alike  in  shape  and  outline,  and  such  even  in 
size  as  would  have  contented  the  proud  heart  of  its  last  owner. 
Godolphin's  eyes  turned  inquiringly  to  Constance. 

' '  It  should  have  been  more  consistent  with  its  ancient  dimen- 
sions," said  she ;  "  but  then  it  would  have  taken  half  our  lives  to 
have  built  it." 

'But  this  must  have  been  the  work  of  years." 
'It  was." 

'  And  your  work,  Constance  ?  " 
'For  you." 

'  And  it  was  for  this  that  you  hesitated  when  I  asked  you  to 
consent  to  raising  the  money  for  the  purchase  of  Lord 's  col- 
lection?" 

"  Yes  ;  am  I  forgiven  ?  " 

"Dearest  Constance,"  said  Godolphin,  flinging  his  arms  around 
her,  "how  have  I  wronged  you  !  During  those  very  years,  then, 
of  our  estrangement — during  those  very  years  in  which  I  thought 
you  indifferent,  you  were  silently  preparing  this  noble  revenge  on 
the  injury  I  did  you.  Why,  why  did  I  not  know  this  before? 
Why  did  you  not  save  us  both  from  so  long  a  misunderstanding 
of  each  other?" 

' '  Direst  Percy,  I  was  to  blame ;  but  I  always  looked  to  this 


GODOLPHIN.  267 

hour  as  to  a  pleasure  of  which  I  could  not  bear  to  rob  myself.  I 
always  fancied  that  when  this  task  was  finished,  and  you  could 
witness  it,  you  would  feel  how  uppermost  you  always  were  in  my 
thoughts,  and  forgive  me  many  faults  from  that  consideration.  I 
knew  that  I  was  executing  your  father's  great  wish  ;  I  knew  that 
you  always,  although  unconsciously  perhaps,  sympathized  in  that 
wish.  I  only  grieve  that,  as  yet,  it  has  been  executed  so  imper- 
fectly." 

"But  how,"  continued  Godolphin,  gazing  on  the  new  pile  as 
they  now  neared  the  entrance,  "  how  was  it  this  never  reached 
my  ears  through  other  quarters?  " 

"But  it  did,  Percy;  don't  you  remember  our  country  neigh- 
bor, Dartmour,  complimenting  you  on  your  intended  improve- 
ments, and  you  fancied  it  was  irony,  and  turned  your  back  on  the 
discomfited  squire  ?  " 

They  now  drove  under  the  gates  surmounted  with  Godolphin's 
arms  ;  and  in  a  few  minutes  more,  they  were  within  the  renovat- 
ed halls  of  the  Priory. 

Perhaps  it  was  impossible  for  Constance  to  have  more  sensibly 
touched  and  flattered  Godolphin  than  by  this  surprise ;  it  affected 
him  far  more  than  the  political  concession  which  to  her  had  been 
so  profound  a  sacrifice ;  for  his  early  poverty  had  produced  in 
him  somewhat  of  that  ancestral  pride  which  the  poor  only  can 
gracefully  wear ;  and  although  the  tie  between  his  father  and  him- 
self had  not  possessed  much  endearment,  yet  he  had  often,  with 
the  generosity  that  belonged  to  him,  icgretted  that  his  parent  had 
not  survived  to  share  in  his  present  wealth,  and  to  devote  some 
portion  of  it  to  the  realization  of  those  wishes  which  he  had  never 
been  permitted  to  consummate.  Godolphin,  too,  was  precisely  of 
a  nature  to  appreciate  the  delicacy  of  Constance's  conduct,  and 
to  be  deeply  penetrated  by  the  thought  that,  while  he  was  follow- 
ing a  career  so  separate  from  hers,  she,  in  the  midst  of  all  her 
ambitious  projects,  could  pause  to  labor,  unthanked  and  in  con- 
cealment, for  the  delight  of  this  hour's  gratification  to  him :  the 
delicacy  and  the  forethought  affected  him  the  more,  because  they 
made  not  a  part  of  the  ordinary  character  of  the  high  and  absorb- 
ed ambition  of  Constance.  He  did  not  thank  her  much  by 
words,  but  his  looks  betrayed  all  he  felt,  and  Constance  was  over- 
paid. 

Although  the  new  portion  of  the  building  was  necessarily  not 
extensive,  yet  each  chamber  was  of  those  grand  proportions  which 
suited  the  magnificent  taste  of  Godolphin,  and  harmonized  with 
the  ancient  ruins.  Constance  had  shown  her  tact  by  leaving  the 
ruins  themselves  (which  it  was  profane  to  touch)  unrestored ;  but 


268  GODOLPHIN. 

so  artfully  were  those  connected  with  the  modern  addition,  and 
thence  with  the  apartments  in  the  cottage,  which  she  had  not 
scrupled  to  re-model,  that  an  effect  was  produced  from  the  whole 
far  more  splendid  than  many  Gothic  buildings  of  greater  extent 
and  higher  pretentions  can  afford.  Godolphin  wandered  delight- 
edly over  the  whole,  charmed  with  the  taste  and  judgment  which 
presided  over  even  the  nicest  arrangement. 

"  Why,  where,"  said  he,  struck  with  the  accurate  antiquity  of 
some  of  the  details,  "  where  learned  you  all  these  minutiae?  You 
are  as  wise  as  Hope  himself  upon  cornices  and  tables." 

"I  was  forced  to  leave  these  things  to  others,"  answered  Con- 
stance ;  ' '  but  I  took  care  that  they  possessed  the  necessary  science. ' ' 

The  night  was  exceedingly  beautiful,  and  they  walked  forth 
under  the  summer-moon  among  those  grounds  in  which  Constance 
had  first  seen  Godolphin.  They  stood  by  the  very  rivulet — they 
paused  at  the  very  spot !  On  the  murmuring  bosom  of  the  wave 
floated  many  a  water-flower ;  and  now  and  then  a  sudden  splash, 
a  sudden  circle  in  the  shallow  stream,  denoted  the  leap  of  the 
river  tyrant  on  his  prey.  There  was  an  universal  odor  in  the  soft 
air;  that  delicate,  that  ineffable  fragrance  belonging  to  those  mid- 
summer nights  which  the  rich  English  poetry  might  well  people 
with  Oberon  and  his  fairies;  the  bat  wheeled  in  many  a  ring 
along  the  air ;  but  the  gentle  light  bathed  all  things,  and  robbed 
his  wanderings  of  the  gloomier  associations  that  belong  to  them  ; 
and  ever,  and  ever,  the  busy  moth  darted  to  and  fro  among  the 
flowers,  or  misled  upward  by  the  stars  whose  beam  allured  it, 
wandered,  like  Desire  after  Happiness,  in  search  of  that  light  it 
might  never  reach.  And  those  stars  still,  with  their  soft,  un- 
speakable eyes  of  love,  looked  down  upon  Godolphin  as  of  old, 
when  by  the  Italian  lake,  he  roved  with  her  for  whom  he  had 
become  the  world  itself.  No,  not  now,  nor  ever,  could  he  gaze 
upon  those  wan,  mysterious  orbs,  and  not  feel  the  pang  that  re- 
mided  him  of  Lucilla !  Between  them  and  her  was  an  affinity 
which  his  imagination  could  not  sever.  All  whom  we  have  loved 
have  something  in  nature  especially  devoted  to  their  memory ;  a 
peculiar  flower,  a  breath  of  air,  a  leaf,  a  tone.  What  love  is  with- 
out some  such  association, 

Striking  the  electric  chain  wherewith  we're  bound  ? 

But  the  dim,  and  shadowy,  and  solemn  stars  were  indeed  meet 
remembrances  of  Volktman's  wild  daughter ;  and  so  intftnately 
was  their  light  connected  in  Godolphin's  breast,  with  ttiat  one 
image,  that  their  very  softness  had,  to  his  eyes,  something  fearful 
and  menacing — although  as  in  sadness,  not  in  anger. 


GODOLPHIN.  269 

CHAPTER  LXVII. 

THE    FULL   RENEWAL   OF    LOVE. — HAPPINESS  PRODUCES  FEAR   "  AND 
IN  TO-DAY  ALREADY  WALKS  TO-MORROW." 

OH,  First  Love  !  well  sang  the  gay  minstrel  of  France,  that  we 
return  again  and  again  to  thee.  As  the  earth  returns  to  its  spring, 
and  is  green  once  more,  we  go  back  to  the  life  of  life,  and  forget 
the  seasons  that  have  rolled  between !  Whether  it  was — perhaps 
so — that  in  the  minds  of  both  was  a  feeling,  that  their  present 
state  was  not  fated  to  endure ;  whether  they  felt,  in  the  deep  calm 
they  enjoyed,  that  the  storm  was  already  at  hand ;  whether  this 
was  the  truth  I  know  not ;  but  certain  it  is,  that  during  the  short 
time  they  remained  at  Godolphin  Priory,  previous  to  their  earthly 
separation,  Constance  and  Godolphin  were  rather  like  lovers  for 
the  first  time  united,  than  like  those  who  have  dragged  on  the 
chain  for  years.  Their  perfect  solitude,  the  absence  of  all  intru- 
sion, so  unlike  the  life  they  had  long  passed,  renewed  all  that 
charm,  that  rapture  in  each  other's  society,  which  belong  to  the 
first  youth  of  love.  True,  that  this  could  not  have  endured  long ; 
but  Fate  suffered  it  to  endure  to  the  last  of  that  tether  which  re- 
mained to  their  union.  Constance  was  not  again  doomed  to  the 
severe  and  grating  shock  which  the  sense  of  estrangement  brings 
to  a  woman's  heart ;  she  was  sensible  that  Godolphin  was  never 
so  entirely,  so  passionately  her  own,  as  towards  the  close  of  their 
mortal  connection.  Everything  around  them  breathed  of  their 
first  love.  This  was  that  home  of  Godolphin's  to  which,  from 
the  splendid  halls  of  Wendover,  the  young  soul  of  the  proud 
orphan  had  so  often  and  so  mournfully  flown  with  a  yearning  and 
wistful  interest :  this  was  that  spot  in  which  he,  awakening  from 
the  fever  of  the  world,  had  fed  his  first  dreams  of  her.  The 
scene,  the  solitude,  was  as  a  bath  to  their  love:  it  braced,  it 
freshened,  it  revived  its  tone.  They  wandered,  they  read,  they 
thought  together ;  the  air  of  the  spot  was  an  intoxication.  The 
world  around  and  without  was  agitated  j  they  felt  it  not :  the 
breakers  of  the  great  deep  died  in  murmurs  on  their  ear.  Ambi- 
tion lulled  its  voice  to  Constance;  Godolphin  had  realized  his  vis- 
ions of  the  ideal.  Time  had  dimmed  their  young  beauty,  but 
their  eyes  saw  it  not ;  they  were  young,  they  were  all  beautiful, 
to  each  other. 

And  Constance  hung  on  the  steps  of  her  lover — still  let  that 
name  be  his !  She  could  not  bear  to  lose  him  for  a  moment :  a 
vague  indistinctness  of  fear  seized  her  if  she  saw  him  not.  Again 
and  again,  in  the  slumbers  of  the  night,  she  stretched  forth  her 


270  GODOLPHIN. 

arms  to  feel  that  he  was  near ;  all  her  pride,  her  coldness  seemed 
gone,  as.  by  a  spell ;  she  loved  as  the  softest,  the  fondest,  love. 
Are  we,  O  Ruler  of  the  future  !  imbued  with  the  half-felt  spirit  of 
prophecy  as  the  hour  of  evil  approaches — the  great,  the  fierce,  the 
irremediable  evil  of  a  life  ?  In  this  depth  and  intensity  of  their 
renewed  passion,  was  there  not  something  preternatural?  Did 
they  not  tremble  as  they  loved  ?  They  were  on  a  spot  to  which 
the  dark  waters  were  slowly  gathering ;  they  clung  to  the  Hour, 
for  Eternity  was  lowering  round. 

It  was  one  evening  that  a  foreboding  emotion  of  this  kind 
weighed  heavily  on  Constance.  She  pressed  Godolphin's  hand 
in  hers,  and  when  he  returned  the  pressure,  she  threw  herself  on 
his  neck,  and  burst  into  tears.  Godolphin  was  alarmed ;  he  cov- 
ered her  cheek  with  kisses,  he  sought  the  cause  of  her  emotion. 

"There  is  no  cause,"  answered  Constance,  recovering  herself, 
but  speaking  in  a  faltering  voice,  ' '  only  I  feel  the  impossibility 
that  this  happiness  can  last ;  its  excess  makes  me  shudder." 

As  she  spoke,  the  wind  rose  and  swept  mourningly  over  the 
large  leaves  of  the  chestnut-tree  beneath  which  they  stood  :  the 
serene  stillness  of  the  evening  seemed  gone ;  an  unquiet  and  mel- 
ancholy spirit  was  loosened  abroad,  and  the  chill  of  the  sudden 
change  which  is  so  frequent  to  our  climate,  came  piercingly  upon 
them.  Godolphin  was  silent  for  some  moments,  for  the  thought 
found  a  sympathy  in  his  own. 

' '  And  is  it  truly  so  ?  "  he  said  at  last ;  "is  there  really  to  be 
no  permanent  happiness  for  us  below  ?  Is  pain  always  to  tread 
the  heels  of  pleasure  ?  Are  we  never  to  say  the  harbor  is  reached, 
and  we  are  safe  !  No,  my  Constance,"  he  added,  warming  into 
the  sanguine  vein  that  traversed  even  his  most  desponding  moods, 
"  No  !  let  us  not  cherish  this  dark  belief;  there  is  no  experience 
for  the  future ;  one  hour  lies  to  the  next :  if  what  has  been  seem 
thus  checkered,  it  is  no  type  of  what  may  be.  We  have  discov- 
ered in  each  other  that  world  that  was  long  lost  to  our  eyes ;  we 
cannot  lose  it  again;  death  only  can  separate  us  !  " 

"Ah,  death!"  said  Constance,  shuddering. 

"  Do  not  recoil  at  that  word,  my  Constance,  for  we  are  yet  in 
the  noon  of  life ;  why  bring,  like  the  Egyptian,  the  spectre  to  the 
feast?  And,  after  all,  if  death  come  while  we  thus  love,  it  is  bet- 
ter than  change  and  time — better  than  custom  which  palls — bet- 
ter than  age  which  chills.  Oh  !  "  continued  Godolphin,  passion- 
ately, "  Oh !  if  this  narrow  shoal  and  sand  of  time  be  but  a 
breathing  spot  in  the  great  heritage  of  immortality,  why  cheat 
ourselves  with  words  so  vague  as  life  and  death  !  What  is  the 
difference  ?  At  roost,  the  entrance  in  and  the  departure  from 


GODOLPHIN.  371 

one  scene  in  our  wide  career.  How  many  scenes  are  left  to  us  ! 
We  do  but  hasten  our  journey,  not  close  it.  Let  us  believe  this, 
Constance,  and  cast  from  us  all  fear  of  our  disunion." 

As  he  spoke,  Constance's  eyes  were  fixed  upon  his  face, 
and  the  deep  calm  that  reigned  there  sank  into  her  soul,  and 
silenced  its  murmurs.  The  thought  of  futurity  is  that  which 
Godolphin  (because  it  is  so  with  all  idealists)  must  have  revolved 
with  the  most  frequent  fervor ;  but  it  was  a  thought  which  he  so 
rarely  touched  upon,  that  it  was  the  first  and  only  time  Constance 
ever  heard  it  breathed  from  his  lips. 

They  turned  into  the  house ;  and  the  mark  is  still  in  that  page 
of  the  volume  which  they  read,  where  the  melodious  accents  of 
Godolphin  died  upon  the  heart  of  Constance.  Can  she  ever  turn 
to  it  again  ? 

CHAPTER  LXVIH. 

THE    LAST  CONVERSATION  BETWEEN  GODOLPHIN  AND  CONSTANCE. 

HIS    THOUGHTS    AND    SOLITARY  WALK  AMIDST  THE  SCENES  OF  HIS 
YOUTH. — THE  LETTER. — THE  DEPARTURE. 

THEY  had  denied  themselves  to  all  the  visitors  who  had 
attacked  the  Priory ;  but  on  their  first  arrival,  they  had  deemed 
it  necessary  to  conciliate  their  neighbors  by  concentrating  into 
one  formal  act  of  hospitality  all  those  social  courtesies  which  they 
could  not  persuade  themselves  to  relinquish  their  solitude  in  order 
singly  to  perform.  Accordingly,  a  day  had  been  fixed  for  one 
grand  fete  at  the  Priory ;  it  was  to  follow  close  on  the  election, 
and  be  considered  as  in  honor  of  that  event.  The  evening  for 
this  gala  succeeded  that  which  I  have  recorded  in  the  last  chapter. 
It  was  with  great  reluctance  that  they  prepared  themselves  to  greet 
this  sole  interruption  of  their  seclusion;  and  they  laughed, 
although  they  did  not  laugh  cordially,  at  the  serious  annoyance 
which  the  giving  a  ball  was  for  the  first  time  to  occasion  to  per- 
sons who  had  been  giving  balls  for  a  succession  of  years. 

The  day  was  remarkably  still  and  close ;  the  sun  had  not  once 
pierced  through  the  dull  atmosphere,  which  was  charged  with  the 
yet  silent  but  gathering  thunder ;  and  as  the  evening  came  on, 
the  sullen  tokens  of  an  approaching  storm  became  more  and  more 
loweringly  pronounced. 

"  We  shall  not,  I  fear,  have  propitious  weather  for  our  festival 
to-night,"  said  Godolphin;  "but  after  a  general  election,  peo- 
ple's nerves  are  tolerably  hardened  :  what  are  the  petty  fret  and 


2?2  GODOLPHIN. 

tumult  of  nature,  lasting  but  an  hour,  to  the  angry  and  everlasting 
passions  of  men  ?  ' ' 

"  A  profound  deduction  from  a  wet  night,  dear  Percy,"  said 
Constance,  smiling. 

"Like  our  friend  C ,"  rejoined  Godolphin,  in  the  same 

vein;  "I  can  philosophize  on  the  putting  on  one's  gloves,  you 
know  :  "  and  therewith  their  conversation  flowed  into  a  vein  sin- 
gularly contrasted  with  the  character  of  the  coming  events.  Time 
fled  on  as  they  were  thus  engaged  until  Constance  started  up,  sur- 
prised at  the  lateness  of  the  hour,  to  attend  the  duties  of  the  toil- 
ette. 

"Wear  this,  dearest,"  said  Godolphin,  taking  a  rose  from  a 
flowerstand  by  the  window,  ' '  in  memory  of  that  ball  at  Wend- 
over  Castle,  which,  although  itself  passed  bitterly  enough  for  me, 
has  yet  left  so  many  happy  recollections."  Constance  put  the 
rose  into  her  bosom ;  its  leaves  were  then  all  fresh  and  brilliant 
— so  were  her  prospects  for  the  future.  He  kissed  her  forehead 
as  they  parted — they  parted  for  the  last  time. 

Godolphin,  left  alone,  turned  to  the  window,  which,  opening 
to  the  ground,  invited  him  forth  among  the  flowers  that  studded 
the  grass-plots  which  sloped  away  to  the  dark  and  unwaving 
trees  that  girded  the  lawn.  That  pause  of  nature  which  pre- 
cedes a  storm  ever  had  a  peculiar  attraction  to  his  mind ;  and 
instinctively  he  sauntered  from  the  house,  wrapped  in  the  dream- 
ing, half-developed  thought  which  belonged  to  his  temperament. 
Mechanically  he  strayed  on  until  he  found  himself  beside  the 
still  lake  which  the  hollows  of  the  dismantled  park  embedded. 
There  he  paused,  gazing  unconsciously  on  the  gloomy  shadows 
which  fell  from  the  arches  of  the  Priory  and  the  tall  trees  around. 
Not  a  ripple  stirred  the  broad  expanse  of  waters ;  the  birds  had 
gone  to  rest ;  no  sound,  save  the  voice  of  the  distant  brook  that 
fed  the  lake  beside  which,  on  the  first  night  of  his  return  to  his 
ancestral  home,  he  had  wandered  with  Constance,  broke  the  uni- 
versal silence.  That  voice  was  never  mute.  All  else  might  be 
dumb;  but  that  living  stream,  rushing  through  its  rocky  bed, 
stilled  not  its  repining  music.  Like  the  soul  of  the  landscape  is 
the  gush  of  a  fresh  stream ;  it  knows  no  sleep,  no  pause :  it 
works  forever — the  life,  the  cause  of  life,  to  all  around.  The 
great  frame  of  nature  may  repose,  but  the  spirit  of  the  waters 
rests  not  for  a  moment.  As  the  soul  of  the  landscape  is  the  soul 
of  man,  in  our  deepest  slumbers  its  course  glides  on,  and  works 
unsilent,  unslumbering,  through  its  destined  channel. 

With  slow  step  and  folded  arms  Godolphin  moved  along.  The 
well-remembered  scenes  of  his  childhood  were  all  before  him; 


GODOLPHIN.  273 

the  wild  verdure  of  the  fern ;  the  broken  ground,  with  its  thou- 
sand mimic  mounts  and  valleys ;  the  deep  dell  overgrown  with 
matted  shrubs  and  dark  as  a  wizard's  cave  ;  the  remains  of  many 
a  stately  vista,  where  the  tender  green  of  the  lime  showed  soft, 
even  in  that  dusky  light,  beneath  the  richer  leaves  of  the  chest- 
nut; all  was  familiar  and  home-breathing  to  his  mind.  Frag- 
ments of  boyish  verse,  forgotten  for  years,  rose  hauntingly  to  his 
remembrance,  telling  of  wild  thoughts,  unsatisfied  dreams,  dis- 
appointed hopes. 

"But  I  am  happy  at  last,"  said  he  aloud;  "yes,  happy.  I 
have  passed  that  bridge  of  life  which  divides  us  from  the  follies 
of  youth;  and  better  prospects,  and  nobler  desires,  extend 
before  me.  What  a  world  of  wisdom  in  that  one  saying  of  Rad- 
clyffe's,  '  Benevolence  is  the  sole  cure  to  idealism ;  '  to  live  for 
others  draws  us  from  demanding  miracles  for  ourselves.  What 
duty  as  yet  have  I  fulfilled?  I  renounced  ambition  as  unwise, 
and  with  it  I  renounced  wisdom  itself.  I  lived  for  pleasure — I 
lived  the  life  of  disappointment.  Without  one  vicious  disposi- 
tion, I  have  fallen  into  a  hundred  vices ;  I  have  never  been 
actively  selfish,  yet  always  selfish.  I  nursed  high  thoughts — for 
what  end  ?  A  poet  in  heart,  a  voluptuary  in  life.  If  mine  own 
interest  came  into  clear  collision  with  that  of  another,  mine  I 
would  have  sacrificed,  but  I  never  asked  if  the  whole  course  of 
my  existence  was  not  that  of  a  war  with  the  universal  interest. 
Too  thoughtful  to  be  without  a  leading  principle  in  life,  the  one 
principle  I  adopted  has  been  one  error.  I  have  tasted  all  that 
imagination  can  give  to  earthly  possession ;  youth,  health,  lib- 
erty, knowledge,  love,  luxury,  pomp.  Woman  was  my  first  pas- 
sion— what  woman  have  I  wooed  in  vain  ?  I  imagined  that  my 
career  hung  upon  Constance's  breath — Constance  loved  and 
refused  me.  I  attributed  my  errors  to  that  refusal;  Constance 
became  mine — how  have  I  retrieved  them?  A  vague,  a  dim,  an 
unconfessed  remorse  has  pursued  me  in  the  memory  of  Lucilla ; 
yet,  why  not  have  redeemed  that  fault  to  her  by  good  to  others  ? 
What  is  penitence  not  put  into  action,  but  the  great  fallacy  in 
morals?  A  sin  to  one,  if  irremediable,  can  only  be  compensated 
by  a  virtue  to  some  one  else.  Yet  was  I  to  blame  in  my  con- 
duct to  Lucilla?  Why  should  conscience  so  haunt  me  at  that 
name  ?  Did  I  not  fly  her  ?  Was  it  not  herself  who  compelled 
our  union?  Did  I  not  cherish,  respect,  honor,  forbear  with  her, 
more  than  I  have  since  with  my  wedded  Constance  ?  Did  I  not 
resolve  to  renounce  Constance  herself,  when  most  loved,  for 
Lucilla's  sake  alone?  Who  prevented  that  sacrifice — who 
deserted  me — who  carved  out  her  own  separate  life? — Lucilla 
18 


274  GODOLPHIN. 

herself.  No,  so  far,  my  sin  is  light.  But  ought  I  not  to  have 
left  all  things  to  follow  her,  to  discover  her,  to  force  upon  her  an 
independence  from  want,  or  possibly  from  crime?  Ah,  there 
was  my  sin,  and  the  sin  of  my  nature  ;  the  sin,  too,  of  the  child- 
ren of  the  world — passive  sin.  I  could  sacrifice  my  happiness, 
but  not  my  indolence ;  I  was  not  ungenerous,  I  was  inert.  But 
is  it  too  late?  Can  I  not  yet  search,  discover  her,  and  remove 
from  my  mind  the  anxious  burden  which  her  remembrance 
imposes  on  it  ?  For,  oh,  one  thought  of  remorse  linked  with  the 
being  who  has  loved  us,  is  more  intolerable  to  the  conscience 
than  the  gravest  crime !  " 

Muttering  such  thoughts,  Godolphin  strayed  on  until  the  deep- 
ening night  suddenly  recallea  his  attention  to  the  lateness  of  the 
hour.  He  turned  to  the  house,  and  entered  his  own  apartment. 
Several  of  the  guests  had  already  come.  Godolphin  was  yet 
dressing,  when  a  servant  knocked  at  the  door  and  presented  him 
a  note. 

"  Lay  it  on  the  table,"  said  he  to  the  valet;  "it  is  probably 
some  excuse  about  the  ball." 

"  Sir,"  said  the  servant,  "a  lad  has  just  brought  it  from  S — ," 
naming  a  village  about  four  miles  distant;  "and  says  he  is  to 
wait  for  an  answer.  He  was  ordered  to  ride  as  fast  as  possible." 

With  some  impatience  Godolphin  took  up  the  note ;  but  the 
moment  his  eye  rested  on  the  writing,  it  fell  from  his  hands  ;  his 
cheek,  his  lips,  grew  as  white  as  death ;  his  heart  seemed  to 
refuse  its  functions ;  it  was  literally  as  if  life  stood  still  for  a 
moment,  as  by  the  force  of  a  sudden  poison.  With  a  strong 
effort  he  recovered  himself,  tore  open  the  note,  and  read  as  fol- 
lows: 

"  Percy  Godolphin,  the  hour  has  arrived — once  more  we  shall 
meet.  I  summon  you,  fair  love,  to  that  meeting — the  bed  of 
death.  Come ! 

"LUCILLA    VOLKTMAN." 

"Don't  alarm  the  Countess,"  said  Godolphin  to  his  servant,  in 
a  very  low,  calm  voice;  "bring  my  horse  to  the  postern,  and 
send  the  bearer  of  this  note  to  me. ' ' 

The  messenger  appeared — a  rough  country  lad,  of  about  eigh- 
teen or  twenty. 

"You  brought  this  note?  " 

"I  did,  your  honor." 

"  From  whom?" 

"  Why,  a  sort  of  a  strange  lady,  as  is  lying  at  the  '  Chequers,' 


GODOLPHIN.  275 

and  not  expected  to  live.  She  be  mortal  bad,  sir,  and  do  run  on 
awesome. ' ' 

Godolphin  pressed  his  hands  convulsively  together. 

"  And  how  long  has  she  been  there  ?  " 

' '  She  only  came  about  two  hours  since,  sir ;  she  came  in  a 
chaise,  sir,  and  was  taken  so  ill,  that  we  sent  for  the  doctor 
directly.  He  says  she  can't  get  over  the  night." 

Godolphin  walked  to  and  fro,  without  trusting  himself  to 
speak,  for  some  minutes.  The  boy  stood  by  the  door,  pulling 
about  his  hat,  and  wondering,  and  staring,  and  thoroughly 
stupid. 

"  Did  she  come  alone  ?  " 

"Eh,  your  honor?" 

"  Was  no  one  with  her?  " 

"Oh,  yes!  a  little  nigger  girl:  she  it  was  sent  me  with  the 
letter." 

"The  horse  is  ready,  sir,"  said  the  servant;  "  but  had  you 
not  better  have  the  carriage  brought  out  ?  It  looks  very  black  ;  it 

must  rain  shortly,  sir ;  and  the  ford  between  this  and  S is 

dangerous  to  cross  in  so  dark  a  night." 

"  Peace  !  "  cried  Godolphin,  with  flashing  eyes,  and  a  low, 
convulsive  laugh.  "  Shall  I  ride  to  that  deathbed  at  my  ease  and 
leisure?  " 

He  strode  rapidly  down  the  stairs,  and  reached  the  small  pos- 
tern door  :  it  was  a  part  of  the  old  building  :  one  of  the  grooms 
held  his  impatient  horse — the  swiftest  in  his  splendid  stud ;  and 
the  dim  but  flaring  light,  held  by  another  of  the  servitors, 
streamed  against  the  dull  heavens  and  the  imperfectly  seen  and 
frowning  ruins  of  the  ancient  pile. 

Godolphin,  unconscious  of  all  around,  and  muttering  to  him- 
self, leaped  on  his  steed  :  the  fire  glinted  from  the  courser's  hoofs ; 
and  thus  the  last  lord  of  that  knightly  race  bade  farewell  to  his 
father's  halls.  Those  words  which  he  had  muttered,  and  which 
his  favorite  servant  caught  and  superstitiously  remembered,  were 
the  words  in  Lucilla's  note  :  "  The  hour  has  arrived  !  " 

CHAPTER  THE  LAST. 

A   DREAD   MEETING. — THE   STORM. — THE    CATASTROPHE. 

ON  the  humble  pallet  of  the  village  inn  lay  the  broken  form 
of  the  astrologer's  expiring  daughter.  The  surgeon  of  the  place 
sat  by  the  bedside,  dismayed  and  terrified,  despite  his  hardened 
vocation,  by  the  wild  words  and  ghastly  shrieks  that  ever  and  anon 


276  GODOLPHIN. 

burst  from  the  lips  of  the  dying  woman.  The  words  were, 
indeed,  uttered  in  a  foreign  tongue  unfamiliar  to  the  leech ;  a 
language  not  ordinarily  suited  to  inspire  terror ;  the  language  of 
love,  and  poetry,  and  music,  the  language  of  the  sweet  South. 
But,  uttered  in  that  voice  where  the  passions  of  the  soul  still 
wrestled  against  the  gathering  weakness  of  the  frame,  the  soft 
syllables  sounded  harsh  and  fearful ;  and  the  dishevelled  locks 
of  the  sufferer — the  wandering  fire  of  the  sunken  eyes — the  dis- 
torted gestures  of  the  thin,  transparent  arms,  gave  fierce  effect  to 
the  unknown  words,  and  betrayed  the  dark  strength  of  the  delir- 
ium which  raged  upon  her. 

One  wretched  light  on  the  rude  table  opposite  the  bed  broke 
the  gloom  of  the  mean  chamber ;  and  across  the  window  flashed 
the  first  lightnings  of  the  storm  about  to  break.  By  the  other  side 
of  the  bed  sat,  mute,  watchful,  fearless,  the  Moorish  girl,  who  was 
Lucilla's  sole  attendant — her  eyes  fixed  on  the  sufferer  with  faith- 
ful, unwearying  love ;  her  ears  listening,  with  all  the  quick  sense 
of  her  race,  to  catch,  amidst  the  growing  noises  of  the  storm» 
and  the  tread  of  hurrying  steps  below,  the  expected  sound  of  the 
hoofs  that  should  herald  Godolphin's  approach. 

Suddenly,  as  if  exhausted  by  the  paroxysm  of  her  disease, 
Lucilla's  voice  sank  into  silence ;  and  she  lay  so  still,  so  motion- 
less, that,  but  for  the  faint  and  wavering  pulse  of  the  hand, 
which  the  surgeon  was  now  suffered  to  hold,  they  might  have 
believed  the  tortured  spirit  was  already  released.  This  torpor 
lasted  for  some  minutes,  when,  raising  herself  up,  as  a  bright 
gleam  of  intelligence  stole  over  the  hollow  cheeks,  Lucilla  put  her 
finger  to  her  lips,  smiled,  and  said,  in  a  low,  clear  voice, 
"Hark!  he  comes  !" 

The  Moor  crept  across  the  chamber,  and  opening  the  door, 
stood  there  in  a  listening  attitude.  She,  as  yet,  heard  not  the 
tread  of  the  speeding  charger ;  a  moment,  and  it  smote  her  ear ; 
a  moment  more  it  halted  by  the  inn-door :  the  snort  of  the  pant- 
ing horse — the  rush  of  steps — Percy  Godolphin  was  in  the  room 
— was  by  the  bedside — the  poor  sufferer  was  in  his  arms ;  and 
softened,  thrilled,  overpowered,  Lucilla  resigned  herself  to  that 
dear  caress :  she  drank  in  the  sobs  of  his  choked  voice ;  she  felt 
still,  as  in  happier  days,  burning  into  her  heart  the  magic  of  his 
kisses.  One  instant  of  youth,  of  love,  of  hope,  broke  into  that 
desolate  and  fearful  hour,  and  silent  and  scarcely  conscious  tears 
gushed  from  her  aching  eyes,  and  laved,  as  it  were,  the  burden 
and  the  agony  from  her  heart. 

The  Moor  traversed  the  room,  and,  laying  one  hand  on  the 


GODOLPHIN.  277 

Burgeon's  shoulder,  pointed  to  the  door.  Lucilla  and  Godolphin 
were  alone. 

"Oh  !  "  said  he,  at  last  finding  voice,  "  is  it  thus — thus  we 
meet  ?  But  say  not  that  you  are  dying,  Lucilla !  Have  mercy, 
mercy  upon  your  betrayer,  your ' ' 

Here  he  could  utter  no  more ;  he  sank  beside  her,  covering  his 
face  with  his  hamds,  and  sobbing  bitterly. 

The  momentary  lucid  interval  for  Lucilla  had  passed  away ; 
the  maniac  rapture  returned,  although  in  a  mild  and  solemn 
shape. 

"Blame  not  yourself,"  said  she,  earnestly;  "the  remorseless 
stars  are  the  sole  betrayers :  yet,  bright  and  lovely  as  they  once 
seemed  when  they  assured  me  of  a  bond  between  thee  and  me,  I 
could  not  dream  that  their  still  and  shining  lore  could  forbode 
such  gloomy  truths.-  Oh,  Percy  !  since  we  parted,  the  earth  has 
not  been  as  the  earth  to  me :  the  Natural  has  left  my  life ;  a 
weird  and  roving  spirit  has  entered  my  breast,  and  filled  my 
brain,  and  possessed  my  thoughts,  and  moved  every  spring  of  my 
existence :  the  sun  and  the  air,  the  green  herb,  the  freshness  and 
glory  of  the  world,  have  been  covered  with  a  mist  in  which  only 
dim  shapes  of  dread  were  shadowed  forth.  But  thou,  my  love, 
on  whose  breast  I  have  dreamed  such  blessed  dreams,  wert  not  to 
blame.  No !  the  power  that  crushes  we  cannot  accuse :  the 
heavens  are  above  the  reach  of  our  reproach  ;  they  smile  upon 
our  agony;  they  bid  the  seasons  roll  on,  unmoved  and  unsympa- 
thizing,  above  our  broken  hearts.  And  what  has  been  my  course 
since  your  last  kiss  on  these  dying  lips  !  Godolphin  " — and  here 
Lucilla  drew  herself  apart  from  him,  and  writhed,  as  with  some 
bitter  memory — "  these  lips  have  felt  other  kisses,  and  these  ears 
have  drunk  unhallowed  sounds,  and  wild  revelry  and  wilder  pas- 
sion have  made  me  laugh  over  the  sepulchre  of  my  soul.  But  I 
am  a  poor  creature  ;  poor,  poor — mad,  Percy — mad — they  tell  me 
so  !  "  Then,  in  the  sudden  changes  incident  to  her  disease, 
Lucilla  continued  :  "I  saw  your  bride,  Percy,  when  you  bore  her 
from  Rome,  and  the  wheels  of  your  bridal  carriage  swept  over  me, 
for  I  flung  myself  in  their  way;  but  they  scathed  me  not:  the 
bright  demons  above  ordained  otherwise,  and  I  wandered  over 
the  world;  but  you  shall  know  not,"  added  Lucilla,  with  a  laugh 
of  dreadful  levity,  "whither  or  with  whom,  for  we  must  have 
concealments,  my  love,  as  you  will  confess ;  and  I  strove  to  for- 
get you,  and  my  brain  sank  in  the  effort.  I  felt  my  frame  wither- 
ing, and  they  told  me  my  doom  was  fixed,  and  I  resolved  to  come 
to  England,  and  look  on  my  first  love  once  more ;  sol  came,  and 
I  saw  you,  Godolphin  j  an  '<  I  knew,  by  the  wrinkles  in  your  brow, 


278  GODOLPHK. 

and  the  musing  thought  in  your  eye,  that  your  proud  lot  had  net 
brought  you  content.  And  then  there  came  to  me  a  stately  shape, 
and  I  knew  it  for  her  for  whom  you  had  deserted  me  :  she  told 
me,  as  you  tell  me,  to  live,  to  forget  the  past.  Mockery,  mock- 
ery !  But  my  heart  is  proud  as  hers,  Percy,  and  I  would  not 
stoop  to  the  kindness  of  a  triumphant  rival;  and  I  fled,  what 
matters  it  whither  ?  But  listen,  Percy,  listen  ;  my  woes  had  made 
me  wise  in  that  science  which  is  not  of  earth,  and  I  knew  that  you 
and  I  must  meet  once  more,  and  that  that  meeting  would  be  in 
this  hour;  and  I  counted,  minute  by  minute,  with  a  savage  glad- 
ness, the  days  that  were  to  bring  on  this  interview  and  my  death  !  " 
Then  raising  her  voice  into  a  wild  shriek :  "  Beware,  beware, 
Percy  !  The  rush  of  waters  is  on  my  ear — the  splash,  the  gurgle  ! 
Beware  ! — your  last  hour,  also,  is  at  hand  !  " 

From  the  moment  in  which  she  uttered  these  words,  Lucilla 
relapsed  into  her  former  frantic  paroxysms.  Shriek  followed 
shriek ;  she  appeared  to  know  none  around  her,  not  even  Godol- 
phin.  With  throes  and  agony  the  soul  seemed  to  wrench  itself 
from  the  frame.  The  hours  swept  on — midnight  came — clear  and 
distinct  the  voice  of  the  clock  below  reached  that  chamber. 

"  Hush  !  "  cried  Lucilla,  starting.  "  Hush  !  "  and  just  at  that 
moment,  through  the  window  opposite,  the  huge  clouds,  breaking 
in  one  spot,  discovered  high  and  far  above  them  a  solitary  star. 

"Thine,  thine,  Godolphin  !  "  she  shrieked  forth,  pointing  to 
the  lonely  orb  ;  "  it  summons  thee ;  farewell,  but  not  for  long  !  " 


The  Moor  rushed  forward  with  a  loud  cry  ;  she  placed  her 
hand  on  Lucilla's  bosom ;  the  heart  was  still,  the  breath  was  gone, 
the  fire  had  vanished  from  the  ashes:  that  strange,  unearthly 
spirit  was  perhaps  with  the  stars  for  whose  mysteries  it  had  so 
vainly  yearned. 

Down  fell  the  black  rain  in  torrents;  and  far  from  the  moun- 
tains you  might  hear  the  rushing  of  the  swollen  streams,  as  they 
poured  into  the  bosom  of  the  valleys.  The  sullen,  continued  mass 
of  cloud  was  broken,  and  the  vapors  hurried  fast  and  lowering  over 
the  heavens,  leaving  now  and  then  a  star  to  glitter  forth  ere  again 
"  the  jaws  of  darkness  did  devour  it  up."  At  the  lower  verge  of 
the  horizon,  the  lightning  flashed  fierce,  but  at  lingering  intervals ; 
the  trees  rocked  and  groaned  beneath  the  rains  and  storm  ;  and, 
immediately  above  the  bowed  head  of  a  solitary  horseman,  broke 
the  thunder  that,  amidst  the  whirl  of  his  own  emotions,  he  scarcely 
heard. 


GODOLPHIN.  279 

Beside  a  stream,  which  the  rains  had  already  swelled,  was  a 
gipsy  encampment ;  and  as  some  of  the  dusky  itinerants,  waiting 
perhaps  the  return  of  a  part  of  their  band  from  a  predatory  excur- 
sion, cowered  over  the  flickering  fires  in  their  tent,  they  per- 
ceived the  horseman  rapidly  approaching  the  stream. 

"  See  to  yon  gentry  cove,"  cried  one  of  the  band;  "  'tis  the 
same  we  saw  in  the  forenight  crossing  the  ford  above.  He  has 
taken  a  short  cut,  the  buzzard  !  and  will  have  to  go  round  again 
to  the  ford ;  a  precious  time  to  be  gallivanting  about !  " 

"  Pish  !  "  said  an  old  hag;  "  I  love  to  see  the  proud  ones  tast- 
ing the  bitter  wind  and  rain  as  we  bears  alway ;  'tis  but  a  mile 
longer  round  to  the  ford.  I  wish  it  was  twenty." 

' '  Hallo  !  ' '  cried  the  first  speaker ;  ' '  the  fool  takes  to  the  water. 
He'll  be  drowned ;  the  banks  are  too  high  and  rough  to  land  man 
or  horse  yonder.  Hallo !  "  and  with  that  painful  sympathy  which 
the  hardest  feel  at  the  imminent  peril  of  another  when  imme- 
diately subjected  to  their  eyes,  the  gipsy  ran  forth  into  the  pelting 
storm,  shouting  to  the  traveller  to  halt.  For  one  moment  Godol- 
phin's  steed  still  shrunk  back  from  the  rushing  tide :  deep  dark- 
ness was  over  the  water ;  and  the  horseman  saw  not  the  height  of 
the  opposite  banks.  The  shout  of  the  gipsy  sounded  to  his  ear 
like  the  cry  of  the  dead  whom  he  had  left :  he  dashed  his  heels 
into  the  side  of  the  reluctant  horse,  and  was  in  the  stream. 

"Light — light  the  torches!"  cried  the  gipsy;  and  in  a  few 
moments  the  banks  were  illumined  with  many  a  brand  from  the 
fire,  which  the  rain  however  almost  instantly  extinguished  ;  yet, 
by  that  momentary  light,  they  saw  the  noble  animal  breasting  the 
waters,  and  perceived  that  Godolphin,  discovering  by  the  depth 
his  mistake,  had  already  turned  the  horse's  head  in  the  direction 
of  the  ford :  they  could  see  no  more,  but  they  shouted  to  Godol- 
phin to  turn  back  to  the  place  from  which  he  had  plunged  ;  and, 
in  a  few  minutes  afterwards,  they  heard,  several  yards  above,  the 
horse  clambering  up  the  rugged  banks,  which  there  were  steep 
and  high,  and  crushing  the  boughs  that  clothed  the  ascent.  They 
thought,  at  the  same  time,  that  they  distinguished  also  the  splash 
of  a  heavy  substance  in  the  waves :  but  they  fancied  it  some 
detached  fragment  of  earth  or  stone,  and  turned  to  their  tent,  in 
the  belief  that  the  daring  rider  had  escaped  the  peril  he  had  so 
madly  incurred.  That  night  the  riderless  steed  of  Godolphin 
arrived  at  the  porch  of  the  Priory,  where  Constance,  alarmed, 
pale,  breathless,  stood  exposed  to  the  storm,  awaiting  the  return 
of  Godolphin,  or  the  messengers  she  had  despatched  in  search  of 
him. 

At  daybreak  his  corpse  was  found  by  the  shallows  of  the  ford ; 


280  GODOLPHIN. 

and  the  mark  of  violence  across  the  temples,  as  of  some  blow, 
led  them  to  guess  that  in  scaling  the  banks  his  head  had  struck 
against  one  of  the  tossing  boughs  that  overhung  them,  and  the 
blow  had  precipitated  him  into  the  waters. 


LETTER  FROM  CONSTANCE,  COUNTESS  OF  ERPINGHAM,  TO- 


•'  August,  1832. 

"  I  HAVE  read  the  work  you  have  so  kindly  compiled  from  the 
papers  transmitted  to  your  care,  and  from  your  own  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  those  to  Avhom  they  relate ;  you  have  in  much  fulfilled  my 
wishes  with  singular  success.  On  the  one  hand,  I  have  been  anxious 
that  a  History  should  be  given  to  the  world,  from  which  lessons 
so  deep  and,  I  firmly  believe,  salutary,  may  be  generally  derived, 
on  the  other  hand,  I  have  been  anxious  that  it  should  be  clothed 
in  such  disguises,  that  the  names  of  the  real  actors  in  the  drama 
should  be  forever  a  secret.  Both  these  objects  you  have  attained. 
It  is  impossible,  I  think,  for  any  one  to  read  the  book  about  to  be 
published,  without  being  impressed  with  the  truth  of  the  moral 
it  is  intended  to  convey,  and  without  seeing,  by  a  thousand  infal- 
lible signs,  that  its  spring  and  its  general  course  have  flowed  from 
reality  and  not  fiction.  Yet  have  you,  by  a  few  slight  alterations 
and  additions,  managed  to  effect  that  concealment  of  names  and 
persons,  which  is  due  no  less  to  the  living  than  to  the  memory  of 
the  dead. 

' '  So  far  I  thank  you  from  my  heart :  but  in  one  point  you 
have  utterly  failed.  You  have  done  no  justice  to  the  noble  char- 
acter you  meant  to  delineate  under  the  name  of  Godolphin  ;  you 
have  drawn  his  likeness  with  a  harsh  and  cruel  pencil ;  you  have 
enlarged  on  the  few  weaknesses  he  might  have  possessed,  until  you 
have  made  them  the  foreground  of  the  portrait ;  and  his  vivid 
generosity,  his  high  honor,  his  brilliant  intellect,  the  extraordi- 
nary stores  of  his  mind,  you  have  left  in  shadow.  Oh,  God  !  that 
for  such  a  being  such  a  destiny  was  reserved  !  And  in  the  prime 
of  life,  just  when  his  mind  had  awakened  to  a  sense  of  its  own 
powers  and  their  legitimate  objects !  What  a  fatal  system  of 
things,  that  could  for  thirty-seven  years  have  led  away,  by  the  pur- 
suits and  dissipations  of  a  life  suited  but  to  the  beings  he  despised, 
a  genius  of  such  an  order,  a  heart  of  such  tender  emotions  !*  But 
on  this  subject  I  cannot,  cannot  write.  I  must  lay  down  the  pen 
to-morrow  I  will  try  and  force  myself  to  resume  it. 

*  The  reader  will  acquit  me  of  the  charge  of  injustice  to  Godolphin's  character  when 
he  arrives  at  this  sentence  ;  it  conveys  'exactly  the  impression  that  my  delineation,  faithful 
to  truth,  is  intended  to  convey — the  influences  of  our  actual  world  on  the  ideal  and  imagin- 
ative order  of  mind,  when  that  jnind  is  without  the  stimulus  of  pursuits  at  onoe  practical 
pad  ennobling. 


GODOLPHIN.  28l 

"  Well,  then,  I  say,  you  have  not  done  justice  to  him.  I 
beseech  you  to  remodel  that  character,  and  atone  to  the  memory  of 
one,  whom  none  ever  saw  but  to  admire,  or  knew  but  to  love. 

"  Of  me, — of  me,  the  vain,  the  scheming,  the  proud,  the 
unfeminine  cherisher  of  bitter  thoughts,  of  stern  designs, — of  me, 
on  the  other  hand,  how  flattering  is  the  picture  you  have  drawn ! 
In  that  flattery  is  my  sure  disguise  ;  therefore,  I  will  not  ask  you 
to  shade  it  into  the  poor  and  unlovely  truth.  But  while,  with 
agony  and  shame,  I  feel  that  you  have  rightly  described  that 
seeming  neglectfulness  of  one  no  more,  which  sprang  from  the 
pride  that  believed  itself  neglected,  you  have  not  said  enough — 
no,  not  one  millionth  part  enough — of  the  real  love  that  I  con- 
stantly bore  to  him ;  the  only  soft  and  redeeming  portion  of  my 
nature.  But  who  can  know,  who  can  describe,  what  another 
feels?  Even  I  knew  not  what  I  felt  until  death  taught  it  me. 

"Since  I  have  read  the  whole  book,  one  thought  constantly 
haunts  me — the  strangeness  that  I  should  survive  his  loss ;  that 
the  stubborn  strings  of  my  heart  have  not  been  broken  long  since; 
that  I  live,  and  live,  too,  amidst  the  world  !  Ay,  but  not  one  of 
the  world ;  with  that  consciousness  I  sustain  myself  in  the  petty 
and  sterile  career  of  life.  Shut  out  henceforth  and  forever,  from 
all  the  tenderer  feelings  that  belong  to  my  sex  ;  without  mother, 
husband,  child,  or  friend  ;  unloved  and  unloving,  I  support  myself 
by  the  belief  that  I  have  done  the  little  suffered  to  my  sex  in 
expediting  the  great  change  which  is  advancing  on  the  world ; 
and  I  cheer  myself  by  the  firm  assurance  that,  sooner  or  later,  a 
time  must  come,  when  those  vast  disparities  in  life  which  have 
been  fatal,  not  to  myself  alone,  but  to  all  I  have  admired  and 
loved ;  which  render  the  great  heartless,  and  the  lowly  servile  ; 
which  make  genius  either  an  enemy  to  mankind  or  the  rictim  to 
itself ;  which  debase  the  energetic  purpose ;  which  fritter  away 
the  ennobling  sentiment ;  which  cool  the  heart  and  fetter  the 
capacities,  and  are  favorable  only  to  the  general  development  of 
the  Mediocre  and  the  Lukewarm,  shall,  if  never  utterly  removed, 
at  least  be  smoothed  away  into  more  genial  and  unobstructed  ele- 
ments of  society.  Alas  !  it  is  with  an  aching  eye  that  we  look 
abroad  for  the  only  solace,  the  only  occupation  of  life, — Solitude 
at  home,  and  Memory  at  our  hearth." 


THE   END. 


